“Vladimir Nabokov referred to editors as ‘pompous avuncular brutes.’ T.S. Eliot said that many of them were just “failed writers.” And Kingsley Amis, that laureate of cantankerousness, spoke of how the worst kind “prowls through your copy like an overzealous gardener with a pruning hook, on the watch for any phrase he senses you were rather pleased with, preferably one that also clinches your argument and if possible is essential to the general drift of the surrounding passage.”
Raymond Carver, at least to begin with, was on altogether better terms with his editor, Gordon Lish, to whom he once wrote, ‘If I have any standing or reputation or credibility in the world, I owe it to you.’”
via The Two Raymond Carvers | The New York Review of Books
MAD about Words
is the brainchild (and heartchild) of
Mary Ann de Stefano
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A good editor is a blessing. Michael Murphy was the first good editor I had, and that was only for the “My Word” columns, but what a difference his touch made on my writing. We know what we want to say and how we mean to say it, but an editor is more than just an extra set of eyes to tell us if we’ve accomplished that. A good editor improves your work and makes it more authentically yours.