Do you guys who write freelance worry much if you see an article you wrote get changed by an editor? Is there usually any back and forth, or do you just wake up one morning and see an article that kinda looks like the one you wrote, but not really? This is what happend to me, and I am clearly annoyed. I just can’t decide if I am just me being too sensitive about my writing, or if need to set some boundries here.
I work with editors in my day job, so it’s not a case of just me having a problem with editing. But freelance writing is different kind of writing.
What caught my eye was the poor sentance strucutre. I scanned the article and noticed a few really clunky sentances. When I checked my copy, I saw it had been changed–and changed for the worse. Now I notice that points that I made (and feel strongly about) have been removed. I suggested the developer consider adding an up view modifier key, so you don’t have to tip the plane to look up or down. Seems like a resonable suggestion, but I guess it was deemed too critical for a preview.
Well, my experience is severely limited, but I think I’d be pretty ticked to see changes made to something I wrote, if I wasn’t at least informed about those changes before it was posted. I certainly prefer to see the “end result” before the article is run.
I’ve never had that happen to me, so I don’t know what to tell you. But, again, my professional experience is very limited.
If we’re talking grammatical changes, or sentence structure, or active/passive voice, something like that, I don’t mind it being changed without me seeing it.
But it sounds like this editor crossed lines. At least in my book. I would prefer to at least know if there’s going to be a substantial change to what I turn in. (If I don’t see it first, at least let me know that it’s going to be different.)
I’m not an editor, but if I were, that would be my policy, I think. It doesn’t seem like that’s asking too much.
nope, its not just u, it would annoy me even if i didnt write the article…
imagine this, company A has a game news web site, and a magazine. 2 teams of people working on the same things. but team web was authorized to go pick up articles from team magazine (sometimes even before they were published… but thats besides the point here) and post them up on the web. when team magazine wasnt looking they even copy and paste the articles but put their own names on instead.
Murph, what you describe is the policy I have had with every editor I have ever worked with as a tech writer. The editors do minor grammar changes, but we discuss ideas or explainations that they think fail, are unclear, or could somehow be done better.
Never before have I worked with an editor whose edits made a passage harder to read.
I have had editors change scores on reviews before. That’s sort of similar, but not really. This is just really weird. I think I am going to just bail on this site. It’s not like it pays actual coin. ;)
I don’t really care too much as long as it isn’t something big. For example I write for a magazine in Australia, and they change words like ‘color’ and flavor’ to ‘colour’ and ‘flavour’.
If they changed the core ideas of my column I would probably get a bit pissy though.
Editing of a writer’s work happens all the time. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. It may chafe sometimes, but you don’t have to write for that market if you decide you don’t like their edits.
In the print world, there’s not a whole lot that can be done to immediately change the article once printed. In the web world, there might be a chance to adjust it. The important question: did the check clear? If so, grin and bear it, and move on.
(Not counting “happend” or “strucutre” which are assumed typos, though “happen’d” is acceptable in 18th century poetry) You do get bonus multiplier for spelling “grammar” right though. :)
I’ve never heard of a freelancer, at least in the game’s press, that was in any position to dictate anything. Perhaps you are an expert in your field, and you can make those sorts of demands.
Within the games press, though, writers are easy to come by and the thought that a freelancer would “shit down [the] neck” of an editor is laughable. A pro will understand that editing happens, and will be able to talk it through with his editor, unless the editor is a complete dick. Which isn’t unheard of.
At least, I don’t recall Bub shitting down my neck when I edited some of his reviews! :lol:
In any professional writing situation, it’s important to establish up front who is to do the shitting, and who is to be shat on.
If you go into such a relationship with an attitude of “sure, fuck with my writing. i’m your bitch-hole,” you’re going to have the integrity your articles raped up the ass faster than ken lay in a crack house. (Can you spell RE-WRITE?)
If, on the other hand, you approach the editor with a battlehardened face of command and presence, you might just have a chance of emerging from the fracas with your man-cherry intact.
Watch your anus, and your anus will watch out for you. Don’t be a punk, make someone else suck on it for a change.
That’s why the boys over at WRITER’S DIGEST call me an asshole behind my back. But at least they respect me. They know if I ever caught them saying that shit to my face, they would feel the sting of a hard cock up their nether chute faster than a Hotmail account sucks up spam.
Professional writers sign contracts that sell the rights to their writing. These contracts, either in part (first US print) or full, state quite clearly that once the piece leaves the writer’s Outbox it is no longer the possession of the writer. That said a good editor is one that makes subtle changes that enhance and never change meaning. I think that long time Newsweek editor, the one who died last year, said it best when he said: “I edited some of the best in the business. I knew I was good when they didn’t notice that I was doing my job.” Lots of new or inexperienced editors seem to change or re-write things simply because they can. Others do it for the valid reason that their pub has a uniform style or demographic they’re aiming at. PCXL used to add pimp talk to my stuff and InQuest still inserts teen slang like “Rocks” and such. I don’t mind, because I really can’t write like that and not feel silly.
Now, an editor substantially re-writing my stories is another thing entirely. That’s not editing, doing that and leaving my name on it is misrepresentation. It’s my name on it. Which is why I never minded Jim Preston’s editing, but another guy at Daily Radar pissed me off when he started adding 2nd grade school yard sexually suggestive lines to the screenshot captions. Even then, “neck shitting” isn’t an option. A professional simply stops working for that pub, asks that the edits be removed, and/or politely asks that his name be removed from the offending over-edited article. I’d probably be more rude if it was for a freebie site though.
(Any writer who claims they wouldn’t benefit from a good editor is a fool, imo. Good editors are as rare as good writers though, but editing is easily as much an art as writing is, when done well.)
In the editing business, you are what we like to call “a problem writer.” Someone who does not understand who is the contractor, and who is the contractee. You get paid to write… or not, with that attitude. The publication is your customer. I’ve never heard that “shitting down the neck” is a good way to retain customers.
Editing that changes the spirit of a writers work, particularly a review, is a problem and should be taken up with the editor. Politely. Copping an attitude like that is a good way to get an apology (but no further work, ever again).
Lesson Two: learn to write in short, declarative sentences. I could barely wade through that purple-prose. Shame on your English teachers for allowing you a passing grade from whatever academies of hackhood were shamed by the granting of your shat-out Carribbean diplomas.
As for your point, BOLLOCKS! Balls. Testes.
Either you have 'em or you don’t.
I haven’t made my way in the writing biz by hanging my head and walking like a lamb to the butt-slaughter, allowing a gauntlet of editors to ream me in succession like so many altar boys.
No.
You have to learn how to fight for your work. If you don’t, you’re a pussy. Worse than a pussy… At least a pussy knows what it is, accepts its role with dignity, lubes itself for the invasion to come. You? You convince yourself that you’re “writers,” all the while tarting up your scented bottoms with Victoria Secret’s finest, waving your sweet bums for the editors in a perverse swimsuit contest of sell-out.
