Re: editors

Camille Scaysbrook (c_scaysbrook@yahoo.com)
Wed, 25 Aug 1999 19:36:22 +1000 

Oh, Scottie, what a tantalising world you have let us see, albeit
momentarily! I am sure I was not the only one sent scurrying to Amazon.com
in search of this elusive tidbit of Scottie's Other Life that we are never
allowed to see. And I am sure they all had as little luck as myself in
locating it. I know that, if you used a nom-de-plume you will never ever
let us know it ... still, I am so curious ... and so glad my contact with
editors has been relatively minor so far, touch wood and touch wood again.
Think I'll be a kind of folk-poet, selling books out of my garage ...
having dipped my toe in the movieland sea I already know that the genre
itself is its own editor and it's hurt enough so far. I can totally and
wholly understand the grief of the Missing The myself.

Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
 
>     '... What about (the collective) you: Are those
>     of you who write tolerant of editorial changes
>     or suggestions or reactions? ...'
> 
>     At Longmans, I had two editors, John Guest &
>     Peter Green.  John was a charming, exquisitely
>     educated gentleman who ran what was then
>     considered the charmingly, gentlemanly 'general' list
>     of an otherwise unillusioned, money-oriented, publishing
>     empire.  Peter Green was his aide de camp who eventually
>     became - & remained until the last year or so - the supreme
>     boss of Penguin.
> 
>     I can only remember them ever making one suggestion
>     for a change affecting the actual prose style.  They kept
>     me straight when I misused Ming for Chang & such details,
>     details that Eton boys know about instinctively in a way
>     closed to a Quaker educated lad like myself.  But only
>     in connection with the title of my first book did
>     they urge me powerfully to drop an article.
>     They wanted 'Run to the Sea' instead of 'THE Run
>     to the Sea.'
> 
>     When it's your first book, believe me, you accept
>     the advice of the big shots.   But I've never actually
>     forgiven them.  Thirty years later, I still grieve over
>     that missing 'the'.  It was MY 'the', it added that
>     lovely formal, brick on brick, quality which is the hallmark
>     of all serious writing - certainly of mine.  And those bastards
>     made me go for that slick, ambiguous, snake-oil salesman
>     alternative.
> 
>     Every writer complains about his publisher - usually that
>     they didn't spend enough on marketing & advertising
>     or don't bribe a sufficient number of promoters.
>     I don’t hold any of that against those two chaps
>     who were always marvellously kind to me.
> 
>     But I can't forget that missing THE.
> 
>     I'm too old to care now so that when it comes
>     to the next two, there's going to be no damned
>     compromise with anyone.  I promise you.
> 
>     Scottie B.


_________________________________________________________

Do You Yahoo!?

Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com