Is there any need for an editor?

Definately : editors and editing: shaping, guiding, supporting first aid for the ailing author - although your choices are a little polemic, Mark. It also depends on the editor and the way the puiblishing house works. Personally, I agree that a good editor 'has a much clearer view of an authors work that the author themselves.' It's a balance anyway. A good editor will give you objective crit. A good author would know when to listen and when not to. That's an ideal situation, as an editor might have commissioned something from the writer, and then they can have it how they like it. Personally, I'd be happy with any dialogie with an editor, but I am a writing whore.

Editors are totally necessary, especially when the writing is a "direct expression of myself" because that's when you need someone to say: "stop being a self-indulgent twat!" Joe

Editors can be brilliant - as long as you have one who understands your work. There is a need for editing, and sometimes when it is your own work you 'can't see the woods for the trees'. I think Form is very important - the difference between Art and a rambling mess - and an Editor can help with that. What are we all doing on here with each other's work, if not 'editing'? There are some people who I've met through abctales who I find invaluable in my draft process because they 'get' what I'm doing and make comments accordingly. You have to have a shared aesthetic to have a good writer/editor relationship. However, the editor can't exist without the writer, and the writer can exist without the editor - but the editor can make the writer 'better'.... Although I found Blake Morrison's article a bit pompous and self-important. I'm sure The Great Gatsby would have been just as perfect with a different title. And the example he gives about 'body' being better than 'hips' is obviously wrong. Hips was better. Everyone I polled agreed. I just saw you thing about 'self indulgent' Joe, and I do agree to a point - but writing is 'self indulgent' isn't it, by its very nature? What's so wrong with self indulgent? (Although I agree about editors being important)

I regard my writing group as a kind of free editing service - especially for poetry, which is probably the most sensitive literary area in which to accept criticism - and I'd be stupid not to at least consider revisons they suggest. Sometimes they spot very obvious flaws which I'd missed a dozen times in my own proofreading.

What it you get lumbered (wood for the trees? Geddit? No? Okay) with an editor who doesn't 'get' your work?

If an editor didn't 'get' work then there wouldn't be much chance of it being published. Bunch of Masons. Richard x

I hope editors are necessary, because I'd quite like to be one. I don't think they are though. Not *necessary* per se, but very useful. I'm pretty sure most decent writers can, given the time, edit their work to near perfection. But it would be extremely useful and expedient to have someone around who can do that for them more quickly and efficiently. Having an editor would certainly sharpen my ideas up.

Yeah, I don't mind being edited. But it depends. Like other people have said they have to 'get' you. One of my stories was recently sent back to me edited and in my opinion it was worse, so I decided not to go ahead with it. The things they hadn't liked were what made the story for me. The person who is editing 'Darts' seemed to make all the right suggestions about how to make the novel better. And I just heard back from the agent this morning. They said my revisions had brilliantly addressed the editor's comments. I love it when an agent uses the word brilliant. She wants me to call her, but I'm too scared. I think I'll leave it for a few days. I think you know instinctively when someone is making the right comments about your work. It's never that I think I know best but I know what I like. I'd rather be happy with it these days.

Yeah, I don't mind being edited. But it depends. Like other people have said they have to 'get' you. One of my stories was recently sent back to me edited and in my opinion it was worse, so I decided not to go ahead with it. The things they hadn't liked were what made the story for me. The person who is editing 'Darts' seemed to make all the right suggestions about how to make the novel better. And I just heard back from the agent this morning. They said my revisions had brilliantly addressed the editor's comments. I love it when an agent uses the word brilliant. She wants me to call her, but I'm too scared. I think I'll leave it for a few days. I think you know instinctively when someone is making the right comments about your work. It's never that I think I know best but I know what I like. I'd rather be happy with it these days.