The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
All writers should go read every word of this essay by Maria Bustillos, written on the occasion of editor Carrie Frye’s departure from the Awl.
The gist of it: your editor is your friend, not some censorious know-it-all trying to ruin your work.
...moreYuka Igarashi of Granta wrote an introspective piece on the trappings and fussiness of copyediting.
The presence of the unedited, the wrongfully edited, and the misspelled can be infuriating to an editor. Igarashi discusses her fight against the urge to edit beyond the office and scrutinize the grammar of her surroundings.
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Halimah Marcus and Benjamin Samuel, the co-editors of Recommended Reading, discuss the ins and outs of editing an ambitious literary project.
...more...moreProper copy editing includes examining the focus, dredging the main point up from the tenth paragraph to make it more prominent. Proper copy editing addresses the language: rooting out cliches, substituting an ordinary term for jargon when it would serve the reader better, altering infelicitous wording.
Check out this amazing Tumblr. The Rumpus editorial board is particularly fond of this one: When all of the important national mag awards go to white dudes.
(Via Xtina Richards)
...moreAn enlightening Paris Review interview with Robert Gottlieb, a veteran editor/publisher whose editorial touch you have undoubtedly experienced.
The editorial process is after all, its own art form that is not wholly visible to readers. Esteemed authors (Toni Morrison, Joseph Heller and Michael Crichton, to name a few) and Gottlieb himself discuss the author-editor working relationship, the hidden intricacies of the editorial process and how the publishing industry has changed our understanding of the editor.
...moreFiction writer Michelle Wittle got so tired of going over her short story that she just sent the damn thing out, assuming it had no typos. Oops.
Of course, this is why you have friends read your stuff just to look for typos that make you look like a lamebrain.
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