Editing Out Loud - a Fast Track to Better Writing

 Alicia Sammons

I worked as an editor for the better part of my too long professional career. Editing can be demanding, but I never thought of it as a particularly glamourous or creative calling. Over the years I climbed my way up from proofreader to senior editorial positions on magazine, major metropolitan newspapers, and editing for independent publisher. 

I always felt in awe of writers and aspired to their magic with words, an assessment shared in popular culture. We see a lot of juicy movies about authors like The Hours and Midnight in Paris. On the other hand, editors can't get much respect even from their writers, including a few authors with whom I've worked. Vladimir Nabokov sneered at them as ‘pompous avuncular brutes.’ 

Robert Gottlieb edited books of Joseph Heller, John Le Carré, John Cheever, and Toni Morrison. The legendary Maxwell Perkins edited and famously mentored Lost Generation icons F. Scott Fitzgerald through his most powerful works, including The Great Gatsby, along with Ernest Hemmingway and Thomas Wolfe. 

Only a few of the writers with whom I've worked appeared to be adept at self-editing. One was the late Ray Bradbury.  No wonder, him being a literary/science fiction giant and all. 

 Ray Bradbury

Ray used to contribute semi-monthly stories to the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, West when I was managing editor there in the 1960s and '70s.  He always submitted perfect manuscripts with nary a comma nor a word out of place. The unspoken pact was that none of us on the lowly editing staff should sully such elegant prose with our blunt blue pencils. I once asked him if he had someone who edited his copy. He shook his head. "My wife sometimes, just a once-over."  (I recall this fondly now, as I benefit from assiduous proofing by my inamorata, the artist Eleanor Spiess-Ferris. 

I'm no Ray Bradbury. I find myself writing fiction in my later years, by mixture of chance and choice. Living the dream, as they say, and on some days, the nightmare. 

Turns out, no surprise, that despite my extensive editing background, I suck at editing my own copy. I can barely stand the cringing. The process has bolstered my respect for editors. A good, supportive but objective editor can be a writer's best friend - as some of my colleagues can attest. A good editor is hard to find. 

I've been lucky to hire some capable professional copy editors over time. I've also traded off editing with colleagues.

Good editing needs to be iterative - applied to stages - i.e. drafts - of fiction, staring with edits on early drafts that we usually do for ourselves. But I don't have the stomach (nor the ability to distance myself from my work sufficiently) when it comes to those crucial later drafts. Few of us do. That's why God created editors.

Maxwell Perkins

Then there's always Father Time, wielding his scythe of deadlines real-or-self-imposed - deadlines that loom larger - yet more vague that those assigned - with my advanced years. Recently I discovered a work-around that works for me and perhaps with other writers, although I've not inquired about that so far. (Perhaps you could comment below if you're a writer or aspiring to be one.)  

Maybe the method not new, but it's new to me. It's simple - if one can find a willing and capable colleague (not easy). In my case, it's my eldest daughter Alicia Sammons, a longtime English teacher and credible columnist off-and-on herself.  She reads my drafts back to me aloud over video connections. (I've also done same with her literature teacher husband Brian on his scifi novel drafts.) Perhaps only a caring relative would volunteer for the task, but I can readily envision doing this reciprocally with a colleague.

The read-aloud editing accelerates the process. I share my drafts with her on Google Docs - a boon for collaborations. I read silently along as I listen. We both catch obvious errors like dropped words, non-sequiturs and muffed punctuation. Beyond that the processes allow me to hear the cadences, word usage, and nuances that bring stories and - especially - characters to life. 

With writer and editor working together, there's no more deciphering editorial corrections on paper manuscripts or on screen. Another plus is that Google Docs allows each of us to revise copy online, then see and comment on changes as we go along. 

Additional benefits include the ability to correct copy on the spot, and best of all to get feedback from one's editing partner on the go.  It won't work for major revisions, but it's great for elegant, stylistic solutions. The editor and writer collaborate closely in real time. As a writer, my revisions can be consistent with my copy's intentions and voicing. 

My enthusiasm for read-back editing may stem from my having grown up in the pre-television era back in the 1940s, when our primary home entertainment and news came over the radio. I spent hours as kid listening to radio dramas, adventures and detective stories.

The method doesn't obviate the need for final proofing, of course, but I find it a great help in the creative process as well as necessary flyspecking. Writing is repetition after all. Plus, there's the companionship, like finding an oasis in the often-desolate treks of writing.

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Cover by Eleanor Spiesss-Ferris

Umberto Tosi's recently published books include the highly praised, Frank Ritz, Hollywood noir detective mystery The Phantom Eye, plus his story collection, Sometimes Ridiculous, plus Ophelia Rising, High Treason, Sports Psyching and Our Own Kind. His short stories have been published most recently in Catamaran Literary Reader and Chicago Quarterly Review where he is a contributing editor.

 His nonfiction essays and articles have been published widely in print and online. He began his career at the Los Angeles Times as a staff writer and managing editor for its prize-winning, Sunday magazine, West. 

He went on to become editor of San Francisco Magazine. and managing editor of Francis Coppola's City of San Francisco. He joined Authors Electric in May 2015 and has contributed to Another Flash in the Pen and One More Flash in the Pen. He has four adult daughters. He resides in Chicago.

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Enjoy my Hollywood noir detective thriller: The Phantom Eye (a Frank Ritz Mystery)  - soon to be followed by Oddly Dead and Death and the Droid.
 "Tosi writes with tremendous style and a pitch perfect ear for everything that makes the classic noir detective story irresistible. Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer, make room for Frank Ritz!" - Elizabeth McKenzie, best-selling author of The Portable Veblen.