How to Know When Your Editor Just Isn't the Right Fit

During my morning Twitter session, my eye was caught by a tweet that read, "Finding a good editor is all about chair placement."  I immediately remembered what I wanted to write a post about, here, for my readers who might also be writers.  When browsing across that particular tweet, I imagined the editor scooching his chair.  Yes, even as a feminist I imagined the editor as a young, blonde (for some reason) guy with some author like Margaret Atwood whose writing - and book - he is so taken with that he scooches the chair in toward the book.  Watch for this if you are rewriting another time for an editor who just does not seem to like what you write.  Maybe it isn't your writing, your book, or you as an author; maybe the editor just isn't the right fit for the genre or something about what you have revealed in your book.  With a childhood aversion to birthday cake, I don't think the person - no matter the credentials - can love The Big Birthday Cake Surprise as well as you can, or as well as readers who'd not only love the book, but eat a big piece of cake after to celebrate its goodness.

Another clue that perhaps your editor isn't sabotaging your writing career, but she just can't love your book, is that she never says, "I absolutely love _______ (that part, or this character)!"  According to bestselling vampire genre author, Anne Rice, try someone else!  There will be someone who can love your books (characters, plot, ecetera) even without being prompted to tell you so.  As for the other kind, your book would be better off with an author who would take it to a different editor.  You wouldn't leave your kids, your pets, or your plants with someone who couldn't feed them while you were gone, water or nurture them - so don't leave your book there, with her.

I've had this experience, I hate to say.  I had an editor who decided to take my only available computer file and chop out the 'fun' parts and the parts that caused readers to feel emotion about the topic, the plot, and the characters.  That is a dead tree!  That is not what an editor does.  I rewrote the emotion, the fun, and the parts I thought I could salvage and published with Fae-tality Publishing.

Watch Anne Rice's advice to writers on youtube, HERE.