My short story Excision is out now in Zombies, edited by Robert N Stephenson.Unfortunately the editor was much better at suggesting structural changes than at copyediting, and has introduced quite a few errors into the story with random deletions of conjunction words like 'and' and 'but'.
He also tacked on his own, misspelled, ending without running it by me first. If you do read this story, remember that my much more subtle version ends at 'discount' and ignore the last few lines.
2 comments:
WTF? Added his own ending? Do most editors do that, or is it his own unique take on the job?
Well...I've not encountered an editor who has made such detrimental changes before (though I have had, a couple of time now, editors who have 'fixed' a sentence of mine without checking with me and made the whole thing read worse; it seems people get so stuck on reading for absolute grammatical rightness that they forget to step back and see if the words still convey the right meaning; in these cases I have taken it as my fault for not making the sentence clear enough so that a superficial reading will understand it straight off).
I think the the editor's job description (remembering I am one in my day job) is to improve the clarity of the work without changing the intentions of the author.
Do I think that was achieved in this particular case? No. Do I think it was unprofessional to make major changes without checking with me first? Oh, yes. Do I think I'm being unprofessional now by bitching about it in a public space? Um, yes, so I'll stop now.
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