Appreciating Editors

I love editors.

No, really, I do. Okay, there are exceptions - there's one editor I hope to never cross paths with again - but you can't get on with everyone.

Working with editors isn't a loss of creative control - it's a beautiful collaboration. A good editor isn't going to ruin your story, but rather make it more what you need and want it to be.

Yes, there are bad editors out there, like there are bad everything else. But if you dismiss the value of editors - as too many self-publishers do - you dismiss a major avenue for improving your craft.

On top of that, I have anthologies edited by inexperienced anthologists and ones edited by experienced ones. There's a coherency to a good anthology that takes a few attempts to get. I actually have two books edited by the same person. The first is a random collection of stories. The second is an anthology - something clicked between the two and he worked out how to do it.

So I'm just going to shout out to editors today - because I don't know where we'd be without them. Nowhere good.