Each year, Southern New Hampshire University’s (SNHU) Word for Word Literary Series dedicates an event to a panel of creative writing professionals. This year, the spotlight was on the role of the editor in the publishing industry, with editors Ellen Datlow and Joe Monti, and copyeditor Deanna Hoak.
The following is Part II of an edited transcript of the panelist interview. To learn more about the panelists, take a look at Part I.
W4W: We’re going to try to pull some questions out of the chat. How fast do you need to be able to edit?
Ellen Datlow: It depends on the length. It depends on so many things, including how complex it is. I have one writer, Kathleen Jennings, whose work is extremely complex, which means I have to really focus. I don’t think of it through a lens of time though.
Deanna Hoak: I’m paid by the hour, but you’re expected to do more and more within that hour. When I first started out in copy editing, the standard was that you were expected to edit about 2,500 words per hour, say ten manuscript pages an hour. But now companies are expecting more and more. I know there is one publisher that wants 17 pages an hour done.
As a copy editor, I read every manuscript at least twice, and I read sections of it more than that, because if I don’t read it at least twice, I will miss some of the plot holes. Plus, you’re fact checking. You’re going back and forth. You’re doing a lot of stuff. Seventeen pages an hour – it just doesn’t work for me. I end up not taking very many projects for the companies that want me to do that.
Joe Monti: I keep it all in my head as I go along. It’s terrible. So I’m a slow reader, but it’s because I read and ingest it and keep it all going in my head at the same time. I may make little comments on the side throughout the manuscript. But yeah, I keep it all in my head, and then keep going. And then there’s a flow that happens. It’s very much a bell curve. Maybe 15, 20 pages the first hour. And then by like hour two or three, I’m going to 40, 60 pages an hour.
But it depends on the book. And sometimes I have little to no editing. I have done almost no editing on Ken Liu‘s quartet of fantasy novels. And if you’re not familiar, the last two were 367,000 words, so it was split in two. That one we cut the ends off and beginnings. But other than that, I didn’t edit almost anything in it. Yet it took me two months because I was reading it and making sure it all fit. And everything fit perfectly. But Ken’s a rare genius, and he’s worked meticulously on his craft. One of the reasons why we work well together is that I know he knows that I trust him, and I get him. This is a lot of the creative part of it–I get your voice.
I got to work with Ursula Le Guin. She passed away right before the copy edits for her introduction to the big omnibus illustrated edition of “Earthsea” was getting published. She wrote the introduction, and copy edits were coming back. She couldn’t do them, so I did them. And I swear I heard her voice in my head.
Ursula had an idiosyncratic use of commas throughout her career. And she also tried to write in verse. Even for an introduction, she would write in verse because she was a big fan of Tolstoy and Tolkien and they tried (to write) in verse as well. It was there. And so with the copyedits it was just stet all the way because of the improper use of commas because that’s what she was doing, that’s what she always did, but that was her art, and I worked to keep that.
When you’re very lucky, you get a good copy editor like Deanna who doesn’t try to impose their voice. They understand the voice of the writer.
Ellen Datlow: When I line edit (read the story line by line), I pick up differences. If someone’s repeating a word three lines down, I note that. If I find something wrong with the line, if I find that I don’t understand what the author is saying, I will question it. Sometimes the writer, they think they have what they mean on the page, but they don’t. Kelly Robson wrote an incredible story, “A Human Stain.” In the third go around, I asked certain questions, and it turned out that I totally misunderstood what was going on because it wasn’t on the page. So sometimes the author has the story but it has to be brought out. That was more than line editing, though, but that process helps to find inconsistencies and pull the author’s meaning out of the work.
W4W: A lot of folks in the audience are in rural America, so they’re kind of curious about how they can be a part of this process. Do they need to move to a big city to get involved with this?
Joe Monti: For editing services, there’s a bit more opportunity now. One of my editors lives in LA and the other one is also remote, but she lives outside of New York City, but just outside. She can commute in. If she doesn’t want to, that’s fine. There are more opportunities now than there were before.
Ellen Datlow: There’s Zoom meetings now, so it’s changed a bit. But still, some publishers want their employees to come in every once in a while, to the office.
Joe Monti: I come in at least two times a week.
Ellen Datlow: Yeah. I think it’s less crucial, but still to make the connections, it’s hard.
As Joe pointed out, there are conventions all over the world. A lot of editors and publishers go to many of those conventions. That’s where you meet people. And yes, you can probably work more remotely. In the past, New York was it, but now there are other places with small publishers all around the country and the world.
W4W: The internet has kind of made the world a little bit smaller, where internships can be done over the internet versus having to be in that actual place where the publishing house is. So for those who are living in rural America, do not lose hope. There are a lot of opportunities. It’s just that you need to hunt them out. And as suggested, a lot of it is networking. Look up those conventions or the conferences that are available.
Going to back to the chat—some writers are very shy or introverted, so how do you network? If they see you at a conference, what is your advice to approaching you?
Ellen Datlow: If you met us here, if you’ve met us virtually or not, come over and say, “I was in this chat. I saw you talking.” That’s an opener right there.
Deanna Hoak: Absolutely. I tend toward the shy side myself. But when I’m at a convention, I know that I have something in common with everyone there. And that makes it so much easier to go and to talk to people and say, “Hey.”
Joe Monti: The other thing I’ll say is that all three of us have been around a little while, and so we have friends. Like, Ellen and I know each other very well. We might be together at a convention. And we might have a couple other people there with us. You might think, “Oh, they’re all talking,” but no, it’s OK. I’ve known Ellen for decades. Don’t worry. You can interrupt us. I’ll see her later. It’s fine.
Ellen Datlow: If people are sitting around in a bar, and if it looks like a social gathering, not business, you can usually just pull up a chair and say, “May I join you?” For conventions, I advise you to go with somebody, a friend, for the first time. If you’ve never been to a convention before, it’s much easier if you’re with somebody. Then the both of you can feel more comfortable.
W4W: Many of the people in the audience tonight are aspiring writers, and the editorial relationships that they experience will be super important in their careers and in their personal lives, because the relationships between editors and copy editors and their writers can be very intense. So how should aspiring writers relate to their editors? What is this relationship like?
Joe Monti: (joking) Adversarial all the way.
No, I mean, look—we’ve chosen to read your book and work with you on it because we like it. The way I edit—and I’m sure it’s the way you edit in the larger sense too, Ellen—we’re both trying to figure out what the story is that you’re trying to tell and help you tell it the best way you can. So if we ask questions it’s because we have a perspective that may be helpful to you. And even if you don’t agree with the perspective, it still means there’s something to look at and examine and work through. So you should disagree and that’s fine. I get disagreed with all the time, and I love it. It sparks conversation.
Ellen Datlow: It also depends on the process you’re in. I mean, if something is on submission, that’s different than if I’ve committed to buying something. If something’s on submission and I really like it, and if it’s a new writer, I try to be a lot more gentle than with my regular authors.
With my regular writers I say, “Why are you doing this? This sucks,” or whatever. I mean, I’ll be more straightforward. But with a newer writer, if it’s submitted to me and I like it, and if I think you’re experienced enough that you can understand my suggestions, you don’t have to take them.
But at least, as Joe says—if I think I can work with you to make your story better and then buy it, I will do that. I don’t have that much time. If I don’t think I’m going to buy it, I probably won’t work with you on the story. I will not commit to buying a story until me and the writer can agree that we can fix it if it needs fixing. But you commission books, Joe—what happens if something doesn’t work out?
Joe Monti: I mean, it hasn’t bitten me in the butt really.
Ellen Datlow: I had the experience at Tor where we commissioned a novella, and the writer wrote a very detailed proposal. A committee looked at it and accepted it. But then, after she wrote it and turned it in, we wound up turning it down. I understood—I know why we did. But she didn’t have to pay the money back, and I got paid for my editing. But that happens once in a while, commissioning something that’s not finished yet, and it not working out. Short story editors don’t do that much, though. I may solicit stories for an anthology, but I never commit to buying one unless I see it first.
Joe Monti: The question of what you’re coming to is the difference between commissioning a book and acquiring it. Usually, manuscripts are fully complete when we buy them. Sometimes they’re partials. And partials are always difficult because you don’t know what you’re going to get. But sometimes if it’s a more experienced author, you know what their writing is like, so you trust them to a certain degree. If it’s a debut author and it’s partial—
Ellen Datlow: It could go south.
Joe Monti: Let’s see. Have I bought a partial from a debut author? I think no.
Ellen Datlow: Yeah, it’s rough. I mean, it’s tough because you’re afraid, you don’t know what you’re going to get.
Joe Monti: I definitely have made offers on things, but they’ve been outbidded because I thought it wasn’t worth it since I didn’t know what I was going to get.
W4W: A lot of our students are really interested in the self-publishing aspect of the trade as well. So for those types of folks, how can they seek editorial assistance before publishing? Are there any traps that they should be aware of where editing services are promising something?
Ellen Datlow: An editing service that promises that they can make your book saleable is bogus, a scam.
They cannot guarantee that unless they’re publishing it themselves. But there are a lot of respectable people who do freelance editing.
But I always worry with self-publishing. I know it’s changed a lot, but I still think that unless you have an audience built in, it’s much harder to get your book out there to people who might want to read it. And do you really want to spend all that time marketing it yourself and not writing your next book? That’s something they should think about before someone self-publishes. Why don’t you try to sell the book first? Why immediately self-publish?
W4W: So if you’re an author out there who’s decided to self-publish, we support that here. But still, you know better than to just throw your book out there. You want to get it edited. You want to get it copy edited. How do you judge whether an editor who has their shingle out is reputable, and how do you judge whether a copy editor who has their shingle out is reputable and someone you can trust with your book?
Ellen Datlow: I would ask people who I knew. I would try to get recommendations from people first. I’m not sure how someone who’s just out of the field and doesn’t know anything would do that, but I think that’s how I would go.
Deanna Hoak: You can ask what they’ve done before, what all books have you copy edited and by whom, things like that.
Joe Monti: Someone mentioned Reedsy in the chat. Or you can go through an agency, for an editor at least, but also I think for a copyeditor.
Ellen Datlow: But also find out if the copyeditors and freelance editors started out in publishing. John Douglas was a great freelance editor. He had been working for publishers for many years. So someone like that, you can look up his bio. It’ll say who he was, what he did at first.
Look for reputation—if they worked with a respectable publisher and worked with certain authors, then presumably they can do a good job freelancing for you.
W4W: Joe raised a good point too about looking up editors. They’re going to tell you what they’ve edited. They’re not going to hide what they’ve done, especially if it’s gotten published and has made it big. So look along the lines of what they have published, and if it’s something along the lines of what you’re writing.
With journals, look for the editor. Are they going to be interested in this particular type of writing? If they’re not, you’re wasting time submitting it to that journal because they’re not going to look at something they’re not interested in. So always do your research in that way too.
Let’s close with AI—are you nervous about it? Do you see a potential to use it anywhere down the road to assist in editing or copy-editing work?
Deanna Hoak: I have no concern whatsoever about AI taking my job as a copy editor. What I have concern about is that if it does become more and more accepted for AI junk to actually get published. That will completely change what copyeditors do, because the copyeditor is going to have to go back and do even more fact-checking and tons of rewriting because it’s crap right now. It’s just crap. I mean, what a copyeditor is going to have to do to something written by AI is not remotely the same thing that they have to do to something that is written by an actual person. You have to basically rewrite it. Sure, AI ’will get better, but I’m highly skeptical that it will get leaps and bounds better.
Ellen Datlow: I can’t imagine getting stories by AI that I’d find interesting. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t imagine that it would have the imagination to create a story I’d like.
Joe Monti: We tried some experiments with generative AI at work just for fun to see if we can write copy. You put the book in, see if it comes out, and it was generally so bad that we always had to rewrite it. It took longer to do the rewrite of the AI copy than it would if we just generated it ourselves. It’s just not worth it.
Ellen Datlow: You don’t think that writing copy could improve with AI?
Deanna Hoak: I think it’ll get better. I think it will definitely get better.
Ellen Datlow: But you still have to edit it. You may even have to rewrite it.
Joe Monti: It’ll be the generic copy that’s like regurgitating a plot.
Ellen Datlow: But I read that all the time. I see that all the time.
Joe Monti: I know, but that’s not good copy. (laughs)
W4W: Would you suggest then for our audience to not even—just not even use AI at all? I mean, even for query letters. Would you say even that is kind of risky?
Ellen Datlow: I don’t get query letters. I mean, a query letter that’s two lines saying, “Hey, here’s my story, read it,” it’s not a query letter. Now when someone’s writing a proposal for Joe or for me for a novella, that would be, I guess, a query letter. And believe me, I don’t think AI would do a very good job of interesting me in the plot or in the story or the storytelling. It wouldn’t show me how the writer writes.
Joe Monti: Right.
Ellen Datlow: That’s one thing I’m not worried about. Plenty of other things, but not that.
Joe Monti: Not yet. Yeah.
W4W: Well, we are coming to the end of our hour. This has been like an incredible journey. And I want to thank our guests so much, Ellen, Deanna and Joe. This has been wonderful. I wish we could go for another hour. I’m so sorry that we didn’t get to all the questions in the chat. We were just carried away with a wonderful conversation. Thank you all for attending!
This concludes our interview with Ellen Datlow, Deanna Hoak and Joe Monti. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more Word for Word events!
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