Authors and Their Editors: Jill Ciment and Victoria Wilson
For AG members, check out the transcript of a recent discussion between Jill Ciment, author of The Tattoo Artist and her editor at Pantheon, Victoria Wilson. The discussion was moderated by mediabistro.com Education Director, Carmen Scheidel. Find a bit below:
Scheidel: There’s discussion all the time about how in the past, book editors used to edit their writers. And more and more the trend is to do less editing. Do you find that to be true, and what has that changed over the years since you’ve been an editor?
Wilson: I’ve worked, I mean, I work the same way that I’ve always worked. And I think most people certainly at Knopf work that way. I mean, I don’t really know. It’s a sort of very private thing. I mean, that’s why I said, when, earlier, if you were to ask me what I do on a manuscript, I would, it’s really not up to me. It’s up to the writer to say what was done on a manuscript. I mean I, you know, I can think of some stories where I might’ve said, “look, I don’t believe this character” or “I don’t think this person should die.” Or other times, I’ve sat with somebody and gone over a manuscript line by line. Or, you know, basically go through it and cut it rather than, and just not cutting it in sections but you’re sort of, you’re sort of just trying to thin it out. I mean, there are so many variations. It’s really, it’s just about instinct. I don’t know how else to, I mean, what I’m not gonna do is I’m not gonna say, well, for this one I did that. A funny story: Once, I used to meet Scott Spencer in the park on 25th street when we were working together; I was editing a novel of his, Endless Love. This was ages ago. He was walking his dog; he lived on 22nd. I was walking my dog. And you know, we were arguing about the death of one of his characters as, you know, we’re standing there in the park basically in our pajamas, early in the morning. And, you know, I’m saying, “you can’t kill this. You cannot have this character kill this person or have this character die in the fire.” And we went back and forth on it, and he had all these letters and that this character had. Anyway, I mean, it’s, it can be sort of as vague as that or as specific as that.
Ciment: But I have to say, I, as someone who’s been edited over the years, you know, you are so grateful for the truth. I mean, you are so lost at a certain point. And not lost, but you can’t see it and usually I’ve, you know – only one time and I actually bought the book back – that I really disagreed with an editor. But the rest of the time, I gotta tell you, usually they’re right. And you may, at first, feel like this incredible anger, like, oh my God. But then you know, it’s usually right. It’s not like such a mysterious process that one person has, they wouldn’t, first of all they wouldn’t be involved with your book if it was that, if you were so, you know, at loggerheads. So usually, what they say, they may say it in a way that you don’t get at the beginning, but you let it filter down. You know, usually it’s usually pretty much on the mark.
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