Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Letters are nice things to get in the mail.

I’m not talking about bills or street-spam from your local dentist. I mean letters. Honest to God Letters, written by a person, meant for you and you alone.

Well, mostly…

There’s one kind of letter that I hate to get:

The Revision Letter.

The Revision Letter is the letter you get from your editor after you’ve submitted your completed manuscript. What they say differs, of course, depending on the editor, the author, and the MS, but one thing they never say is:

“Hiya. Just wanted to say that your latest book is fekking brilliant and it can’t possibly be improved. Nice job!”

Yeah, that just doesn’t happen. Not to me, anyway.

What does happen is, when I open it up, I see line after line of tiny type and each of those lines is a criticism, a flaw exposed, a dagger to my heart. I read each one, react with angst or frustration or homicidal rage (or all three). I weep. I curse each and every cell of my editor’s body. I go to my office and gather my pens and papers and throw them all in the trash because, after all, what the hell’s the use? And the worst of it all? Each and every line is usually dead-on and–all too often–points out something that had bothered my internal editor, too (though obviously not enough to overcome the protestations of my internal author).

I hate revision letters.

And earlier this week, I wrote one.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was beta-reading an MS for a friend. Well, last weekend I finished, wrote up my version of the dreaded revision letter, emailed him the basics, and sent the line-by-line out in the post. To his credit, he took it well–at least he didn’t unfriend me on Facebook or send a pipe-bomb in the mail (though the post hasn’t arrived, yet). And, to be honest, it’s a good book that tells an interesting story; I just think it can be made better.

Occasionally, I’ve pushed back on editorial comments I’ve received. For instance, there are some sections in the Fallen Cloud Saga that my editor wanted to cut entirely. I understand her arguments–usually it was about sections that were not directly related to the main plot–but I felt my counter-arguments about character development  and pacing were stronger. So, rightly or wrongly, those sections made it into the final version. In editing my friend’s MS, I do not expect my every note to be acted upon. When I am a writer working with an editor, I know it’s my book that’s going out there, but as an editor working with a writer, I know that it is not my book, and my opinion is secondary to the author’s.

For authors, though, it can be a difficult distinction to make: Is my editor right, or am I?

For most notes in my revision letters, they’re big facepalm moments. I read them, and oh yeah, she’s right; that needs to be fixed. For others, though, it’s a toss-up, and I have to be careful that my Writerly Ego isn’t just giving a knee-jerk response. When reading revision letters, when taking in any sort of critique, I need to be in Editor Mode. I need to lock my internal author in an internal closet so he won’t poison the process. Editorial notes are not always correct, but they are my editor’s honest opinion, and therefore worthy of consideration.

k