Sometime this afternoon the final edits for “The Nesting Dolls” will come thumping into my Inbox. For the next ten days, I’ll spend my working hours pondering whether a paragraph, a line, a word or a punctuation mark should or should not be changed. After that, except for a last minute spit-shine, the manuscript is pretty well out of my hands until August 17th when “The Nesting Dolls” hits the stores.
When writers dream about editors they dream about Maxwell Perkins, the brilliant editor who shaped and polished the prose of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and most famously, Thomas Wolfe. When writers have nightmares about editors, they lay awake remembering the poisonous relationship between Gordon Lish and the immensely talented but too easily led, Raymond Carver.
Depending where they are in their career and in the editorial process, most writers place their own editors somewhere along the continuum that runs between the poles of saviour and destroyer.
I have forgotten the name of my first editor. Freud would have no difficulty explaining why. “1919: The Love Letters of George and Adelaide” was my first book. I co-wrote it with Ron Marken, and the editorial process was nasty, brutish and short. Ron and I had to completely rewrite the manuscript, but when we had wiped the blood off and we were finished, the manuscript was better – not perfect, not even great, but pretty good—and I had learned a lot.
The editor of the first Joanne Kilbourn novel was Jennifer Glossop, and she and Rob Sanders of D&M deserve front row seats in the choir of angels for the work they did on “Deadly Appearances”. The manuscript was an unwieldy mess, but they saw something worth salvaging in it, and Rob hired Jennifer to chip away all the material that needed to be chipped away. It was a daunting job, but at the end we had a real book, and Rob had taught me a great lesson. “This is a good book,” he said as the editorial process began. “We’re going to push you hard, but if you think we’re wrong, you push back.”
My first editor at M&S was James Adams. We had a good working relationship, and when the book was published and I came to the International Festival of Writers at Harbourfront to publicize it, James did something so charming that it belonged in an old Cary Grant movie. James and I had never met, and so he stood in line with people who were waiting for me to sign their books, opened his book for me and asked softly if I could make it out to James Adams. Lovely!
Dinah Forbes has been my editor at M&S for the last eight books. I always tell students that editors are a writer’s teachers not her adversaries, and Dinah has been a very fine teacher. When I’m writing I can often Dinah’s voice, cautioning me against the excess of sentimentality to which I am prone; urging me to curb my Little Red Riding Hood tendencies and stay on the path, and always and everywhere, reminding me to CHECK MY FACTS!
Bob Tyrrell has been my editor for “Love You to Death”, the Rapid Read book I wrote for Raven/Orca. He’s thoroughly professional; he’s also lots of fun—recommending books about fine scotch for my husband, describing meals and trips and giving me glimpses into a family life that is as happy as my own.
I can’t end this list without mentioning my agent Bella Pomer, always my first and best editor, my advocate and my friend.