In a recent conversation my friend Steve mentioned a disturbing editorial board meeting. I’ve mentioned Steve before—he’s an editor at an academic press in New York. What made this meeting disturbing, he said, was that editors had already decided what a writer’s style was, based on a previous book. Writing style, in my experience, is fluid. I have written non-fiction books that are, frankly, boring. That’s what I’d learned the academic presses wanted. As a writer, however, I can produce pieces of a totally different style. Who’s to say what kind of writer I am? This disturbs me because editors are the fundamental gatekeepers of the publishing industry. And they don’t understand writing. There was a time when editors were writers. Now they’re business men and women. I wonder how many of them read for pleasure. Type-casting used to be something actors feared. I fear it too, I guess, as a writer. If ...
Blog of a struggling writer.