What’s an editor to do?

What’s an editor to do?

I had two amazing book reviews this week.  One of the reviews was from The Washington Jewish Week http://www.washingtonjewishweek.com/main.asp?SectionID=27&subsectionID=25&articleID=12181 and the other was in the magazine section of the Jerusalem Post http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Books/Article.aspx?id=167242.  Both articles had a lot in common.  Both articles used phrases like, “a page turner” or “compelling”.  But they also both said the book wasn’t well written; that I needed an editor – or (gasp!) a ghost writer.  So what happened?

Over the past few years, my writing has received nothing but positive reviews and people who have read the beginnings of the other books I’m working on have complemented my writing style as being captivating and vivid.  What happened with my biography?

First of all, writing your autobiography is a different animal than writing a textbook, a novel, or any other piece of literature.  Yes, its story telling, but still, it’s different.  And then, the question – did I have an editor?  Of course I had an editor, an excellent editor.

An autobiography comes from the heart, it’s a part of who you are.  The process of writing an autobiography is, in many ways, like giving birth to a baby – only far more painful. In deciding how to write my book, I consciously chose to let my own voice tell the story – the four-year-old Penina, sounds like a four-year-old, the teenage Penina sounds like a teenager, etc.  My style of writing was not the flowery writing of a novel or even the academic style of a textbook.  I chose to write in an uncomplicated and forthright style that would communicate the details without losing the reader in a pit of beautiful literary sludge.

This, of course, presented my editor with a huge challenge – how to edit the book without losing my voice?  In the end, my editor had to accomplish three things when she edited my book, and in some opinions, in trying to accomplish the first two, the third may have suffered – a little.

The first thing my editor had to do – a monumental task, by the way – was to take a critical outside look at the book and to help me say all the things I felt needed saying without offending anyone.  I needed to share difficult things that happened to me in a delicate way so that the book was not too difficult for sensitive readers to absorb.  I needed to explain the mindset of a Jewish girl who had embraced Christianity without making the book too Christian for a Jewish audience, and I needed to write about difficulties I experienced within the Jewish community without pointing fingers, blaming or embarrassing anyone.  My editor accomplished this herculean task fabulously.

The next thing my editor needed to do was to preserve my voice.  She could have re-written the book, as so often happens in the publishing world, but then it would have been her book and not mine; her story and not mine.  How many times did she send me a paragraph that she had edited to which I responded, “But that’s not the way I would say it”?  Too many to count.  In this test as well, she passed with flying colors.

The third goal of the editor is to produce a work that flows well, doesn’t ramble and isn’t disjointed or choppy.  I am guessing, based on the reviews, that the resulting style didn’t come across well, at least in some minds.  Of course, for every negative statement about the writing style, there have been a dozen readers who have commented that the style accomplished exactly what I was aiming for – they felt like we were sitting on the sofa together chatting over tea and biscuits as I confided in them all the details of my unbelievable life.  Most of the readers have told me that they couldn’t put the book down – one even stayed up all night just to finish it!  So, I guess the end result couldn’t be that bad.

I appreciate the opinions of those who “know” literature, the reviewers, the critics.  And I am sure that I am overly sensitive because I have not yet developed the tough skin that goes along with being in the public eye, being subject to critics.  I also appreciate my readers, those who are supporting me and the work I do.  But most of all, I appreciate my editor, who gets little thanks and an awful lot of criticism, but who invested nearly as much of herself in my book as I did, and did a fabulous job at it, too.

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