From: "Erica VD Ginter" <eginter at klgai.com>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: A Short Editing Screed . . . [WSFA] Re: Anvil & Flint
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 20:07:47 -0500
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

One of the first writers whose work I edited at BioScience was Edward O.
Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the top ten biologists and/or
naturalists of the 20th century (IMHO). I changed a few words here and
there, mostly to conform with BioScience style. That was all the editing he
needed.

A few years later, a tenure-track marine biologist wrote a book for us that
was 6 months late, poorly written, and really a book report rather that a
book review. I edited it heavily to make it possible to print the thing,
buried in the dark recesses of the semiannual book issue. He called the
editor-in-chief (who had OKed my work) to rant about how his work had been
butchered, that every one of his words was "as carefully chosen as if I had
been writing a poem!"

Erica
who is "editing" Edgar Pangborn for contemporary spelling

-----Original Message-----
From: Ted White [mailto:tedwhite at compusnet.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2002 6:22 PM
To: WSFA members
Subject: [WSFA] Re: A Short Editing Screed . . . [WSFA] Re: Anvil &
Flint

As the occasional victim of bad editing (the worst was a copyeditor at
Signet,
who changed a character saying "From space, my planet looks browner than
yours,"
to "...my universe looks browner than yours" -- and we all know now that the
universe is, what?  Beige?), I can only offer heartfelt agreement with what
you've said.

Like Campbell, I've worked both sides of the fence, and as an editor I
always
appreciated good writers:  they require the least editing.  (I was the
copyeditor on Ursula LeGuin's LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS.  I changed maybe three
words in the course of that novel -- and queried them all.)  Of all the
major SF
writers I've edited/copyedited, I liked Brian Aldiss least.

--Ted White