Author vs Copy Editor

Annamaria on Monday

First, I state the obvious.  All of us writers! We all need copy editors.  And I for one need them desperately, given my proofreading challenges.  I try to find my own mistakes.  But....

Not even Sister Mary Catharine O'Connor could get me to do it well.  SMC, as we lovingly called her, was the most demanding teacher I ever had.  "Hard marker" is not a strong enough a term to truly describe her.  She did not grade one's work on how well you had completed the assignment, but how close you came to what she thought you were capable of.  This was particularly true of her creative writing class, but also of the papers for lit courses she taught.  When you handed in your homework, she insisted that it had to be signed on the title page, with the word "Proofread" over your signature.  If, when reading your work, she came to a fourth error or typo, she stopped reading.  And no matter how brilliant the content, you could not get an A.  In the end, she despaired of me.  In the my third year, she gave me a dictionary, inscribed with the words, "Patricia, I give up.  Use this in good health."

I still have it.  That's it - well-worn, above

(BTW, I would not be here or anywhere else were authors are found, if it weren't for SMC.  She was the real deal when it comes to writers!  Her stories were published in the New Yorker.  The year she gave me the dictionary, her collection of short stories was published.  I also still have my copy of that  There are "rare" copies available on Amazon.  if you look for the book today, here is how the description of her anthology begins:

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

What a privilege to have had her as my teacher.

I was her student in the olden times, way before spell check and decades before kids were allowed to be dyslectic.  I did not find out that I was so impaired until the person who tested my child also tested me.  The first words she said about me after the test were, "I bet you are a bad speller." Yup! And an even worse proofreader. My  neurological condition is called mixed dominance. It also causes me to mix up my right and left.

I NEED the help of a good copy editor. Through six non-fiction books and so far, six novels, I have had copy editors who found my typos and filled in the missing words.  They have my undying gratitude for making me look as good as I try but fail to be.  Those fixers are the unsung heroes of my writing life.

Except for two. 

One was the copy editor who worked on (I should say "worked over"- in its criminal connotation) my last nonfiction, Monster Boss. That was a hard time for me personally, with four difficulties ganging up on me, any one of which would have tested my capacity.  It was also the first time I was sent a digitally marked up file and had to respond to it on line. We're talking here about 2008.  In addition my other personal issues, David and I were living on a construction site without our own Wifi.  I had to depend on what I could pick up of unpassworded connections in the neighborhood.  Grrr.

For Monster Boss, the copy editor's main goal was to rewrite my book in what she considered a proper business-like style.  She rewrote almost every sentence, on every page, often turning the active voice into the passive, eradicating what she called a "breezy, negligible style, inappropriate for a serious business book."

The change I remember best was her rewrite of the end of a chapter.  I wrote, "Okay.  You have set your goal. Now, pick a path and get moving."

She changed that to: "Once a final result is chosen, it is essential to carefully plan one's approach...Blah. blah, blah."  Her sentence was twenty-two words long.  Grrr.

What I have been facing lately is nowhere near as bad as that.  This time it has to do with a copy editor who may just lack experience with historical fiction.  And in fact, it may be that the copy editor was really not a person at all.  But a Bot.  Or maybe - what may very well turn out to the worst possibility - the combination of a person and Bot.  Anyway, the manuscript that I got back this past Friday for my approval was replete with "corrections" where the editor thought it was his/her/its job to inform me that in the 21st Century, black men will react negatively if anyone calls them "Boy."  This, as you can imagine, was not news to me. She/he/it insisted that I should never use the word "boy."  They (?) replaced it wherever it appeared. Since my characters in this book are living in colonial Africa in 1914, they talk like people of their time, and there were many, many of those "boys@ in my MS.

Late in my story, a drunken and angry bigot refers to the Indian residents of Nairobi as "wogs".  I got the digital version of a tongue-lashing for my horrible disregard for 21st Century sensibilities but employing such racist language. 

I had received a preview of how this editor was going to handle my MS.  I picked up on this misplaced intolerance for 1914 language.  In my comments on the sample, I allowed as how one cannot apply modern-day sensitivity to the way people in 1914 actually spoke.  In my comments regarding the Chapter One sample, I said that, as a historical novelist, it was my intention to portray the times as they actually were.  But, I added that I am also careful never to imply that I approve of racism. (In 1914 British, they called it racialism.)  That said, I thought my nemesis would drop the subject.

But no. When I got back the edited full manuscript, the editor had taken out all the "boys."  He/she/it even changed "houseboy" to "house servant" and "stableboy" to "stable hand."  My characters were made to talk about the three young Kikuyu who show up at the scene of the crime, not as "Kikuyu boys" but as "Kikuyu young men."

Over the past three days, I have spent about seventeen hours, going through the MS and putting my characters back into 1914, where they live.  They are back to talking the way people talked then.  Thinking in the way people thought at that time.

In fact, every body talked differently then, not just my fictional people.  Here's a for instance. That year, WWI began.  Eventually, the Harlem Hellfighters volunteered to fight for their country.  But, they were marginalized by racist US Army policies that refused to let them fight.  Once in France, the French - desperate for warriors - took them and fought beside them.  Those black American heroes composed and sang songs about their battle exploits.  And what did they call themselves in their lyrics?  Boys!  This example is from one of their songs "On Patrol in No Man's Land."

What’s the time? Nine.
All in line.
All right, boys, now take it slow.
Are you ready? Steady!  Very good,Eddie.
Over the top, let’s go!
Quiet, quiet, else you will start a riot.
Keep your proper distance, follow ’long.
Cover, brother, and when you see me hover,
Obey my orders and you won’t go wrong...

Hear it here

After my typing "STET" about 150 times at this point, my story is restored to its historical accuracy.  Now, I will stop this venting.  But please know, I am still smarting from the more than one hundred  sanctimonious scoldings. And I deeply resent my aching spine, which I got from sitting at the computer, getting more and more tense and angry at all the time that it took to restore my manuscript to where I know it has to be.

I remind myself.  And you.  The MS in question is for A Death on the Lord's Day, my first new work to be published in six years.  That painful hiatus was due to a perfect storm of publishing snafus.  For all that time, that book has been in no man's land.  BUT NO MORE!  It will be out in time for Bouchercon.  Just typing those words makes me feel better.