![]() Not just because I had failed again, but because I really needed the money. When I opened their letter and saw “rejection,” it felt like getting kicked in the gut. I still remember the time 25-plus years ago I had hoped to sell an article to a national publication. In the past, I have had days-sometimes several-ruined by gloom and disappointment. But I allowed his rather rushed requested time frame to affect my judgment and went full speed head. It would have helped to have had a short phone chat with the author, so I had a better feel for him as a person and what he hoped to achieve with his latest book (he had self-published several). Yet, in this most recent instance, I did the exact opposite. Since then, I’ve tried to use a lighter hand. On a previous book-editing job for a major publishing house, the editor told me an author had complained I had removed too much of his voice. But in this case, we hadn’t reached an agreement and the author wasn’t used to my attempts at dressing up his prose. I’ve done that with other, previous edits, under the theory that the individual can always change it. In one place, I added a reference to a book he had never read. The author’s opening struck me as so ho-hum and in need of refining that instead of editing, I did too much rewriting. Keep an eye on the fine line between editing and creativity.You are a good writer, but that’s not what I’m looking for.” “In many places it no longer sounded like me. “The issue I have is that it was more ghostwriting than editing,” he said. In this particular episode, I had to admit I had gone too far in my zeal to improve the author’s first chapter. Fortunately, I learned something from the experience. When an author I did a sample edit for used them recently, it left me smarting. No matter how long you’ve been at this and no matter how much you might have expected them, those words still hurt. They say they have “decided to go in another direction.” I think of it as a convenient catch-all, delivered when the company’s human resources department, your supervisor, or-in the case of Christian PEN members, a would-be author-can’t think of anything better to say. It’s the dreaded phrase you have likely heard before or will in the not-too-distant future.
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