The other day in my journal I found a cartoon I’d saved about the editing profession. An aspiring young writer faces a no-nonsense professional who explains that his literary opus plopped on the desk between them does indeed have commercial potential. As she tells him: “With ruthless editing and extensive rewrites, this could be the next lackluster American Novel.”
In my checkered career as an editor, I didn’t worry about the best-seller lists. I didn’t edit literary fiction, but I did work with a vast array of authors, from Pulitzer Prize-winning columnists to unabashed amateurs who had a good story to tell, as long as their words didn’t get in the way. My role was to help writers reach more readers by conveying their truth as compellingly as possible, without missing a deadline or overlooking an egregious error.
My first full-time editing job came at the Berkeley Barb, once one of the largest underground papers in California. But at the end of the Seventies, the unpopular Vietnam War had ended, and this plucky weekly paper was on its last legs. In theory, we were still a band of Fourth Estate radicals open to everything, especially if it meant shocking the bourgeoisie. There I learned how much experience matters. First-time authors might fight me tooth and nail as I tried to revise their precious revolutionary prose because they’d convinced themselves that their words were carved in stone—even if they’d written their story while they were stoned. Fortunately for me, writers who’d been published before were much more congenial to work with, because I’d make it clear from the beginning that it would always be their byline, not mine, on their finished work.
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Some Do’s and Don’ts for Submitting & Writing Non-fiction Prose
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Every Monday morning when I reported for duty at Rupert Murdoch’s supermarket tabloid Star Magazine, where I quickly had to memorize Elizabeth Taylor’s marriages in chronological order, the first thing we “rim rats” on the copy desk would ask our copy chief was this million-dollar question: “Any libel or lawsuits?” Invariably he’d shake his head, and proudly confirm, “Not today!” We knew what we were hired to do—and how far we dared to go. I lasted there almost four years.
Boredom is always the enemy, especially in non-fiction because you don’t want the facts to bog the story down. Once a talented Star reporter turned in her first draft with this opening line: “I spent the night in a haunted house and nothing happened!” Her exclamation mark wasn’t enough. We had to redo the lede just to trick readers into entering the story.
I regard editing as a balancing act. Of course, you want to liberate every sentence from jargon, rhetoric and clichés. Although as an old tabloid editor, I’ve always had a soft spot for bad puns, but in good measure. Once at Star, an aspiring writer submitted a story that he tried to juice up by describing the locale as having “trout-infested waters.” That went over the line, so I cut it.
Years later as an op-ed editor at New York Newsday and Newsday, I had the time to ensure that the contributing writers were on board with every revision. If our interaction proved fruitful, our editorial banter might produce better points that hadn’t been considered—or had been discarded by the author in their deadline rush.
And that point is worth reiterating, especially in the digital age. Back in the day, I’d tell myself that my copyediting was nearly perfect until I spoke it out loud. Hearing those words would raise issues, whether large or small, factual or structural, especially about the flow of the prose—or as poets might say, when it’s time to breathe.
The devil’s in the details. For a brief news item, everything that’s important for the reader to know has to appear right up front. Longer pieces can take their time getting their points across. Yet sometimes the most engaging element that could make the reporting unique might get cut arbitrarily. This is where the writer’s viewpoint is key. At Newsday, my friend wrote a story about an elderly suburban man found dead in his living room easy chair. His body had been decomposing there a year. It was only discovered when a utility worker came to investigate why the electric bill hadn’t been paid. The TV had never been turned off. The copyeditor had wanted to cut that fact, but she insisted it remain in the lede. She was right. In print, it caught the attention of late-night TV hosts who spread that sadly mundane story to millions of people far beyond Newsday’s circulation.
As a Sixties kid, I grew to appreciate Jack Kerouac’s “spontaneous bop prosody.” Later, in my career, I wondered how an editor would handle Kerouac’s breakthrough style since I knew how much he valued his “first thought, best thought” mantra. Luckily for me, I had the chance to ask his agent, Sterling Lord, at a Kerouac commemorative event in Northport, where he’d lived with his mom. Lord told me that a wonderful copyeditor—he didn’t say who—was the unsung hero for “On the Road,” the novel that put the “king of the beats” on the map. The editor was also a musician, so she respected the rhythms of his prose. But Kerouac resented any interference, no matter how sympathetic. After that book became a best-seller in 1957, Lord helped his successful client gain total control of his every word subsequently. That’s what his author wanted, Lord told me with a shrug, but none of his other books ever did as well.
The moral of this story is that even a great writer can benefit from good editing.
Spencer Rumsey is a professional editor, writer and author of his debut novel, Kathmandu Rising.