on creation and refinement

Posted by Suzy Vitello Soulé on October 27th, 2010 at 05:59 AM | 1 comments | | Tweet

A good editor will not tamper with voice or the big picture, but will suggest changes that amplify that voice and allow the true nature of the writing to shine all the more authentically.

There was quite a fuss made across the pond when this article on Jane Austen hit cyberspace a few days ago.

A three year study concluded that the work of Ms. Austen was heavily edited by a man named William Gifford, who altered Austen’s much more free-flowing style to create the polished prose that characterized her six novels.

The relationship between creator and editor is an interesting one.  There are few authors whose original words are not corralled and abridged at some point before they morph into galleys.  Cormac McCarthy is one famous example of an author who refuses to have his unique style tampered with.  Young adult author Laurie Halse Anderson might be another.

But, not to diminish the careful findings of the academicians at Oxford, but, hello, Jane Austen was a woman who lived 200 years ago!  It would shock me if her novels had not been redlined by some pinchy-faced editor.

In the 20-something years I’ve been writing and editing, I’ve developed a working understanding of the balance between first drafts and refinement.  Initial drafts often rip out of the writer with the force of a jet engine taking off—they contain the spark, the energy that propelled them into being.  But they are also often bereft of the clarity that only comes from revision and distance—the author is often astounded, upon rereading an early draft, that the sentences did not wholly convey the intended picture. A good editor will not tamper with voice or the big picture, but will suggest changes that amplify that voice and allow the true nature of the writing to shine all the more authentically.  Whether that was the case with Austen’s novels cannot be known—for that discernment we’d have to ask the author.

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