Who Owns The Work(aka - Sensitive Editors)?

Writers write; it's what we do.  And not everything comes out in a final, flowing form of beauty.  It needs to be polished, revised, and, above all, edited.  However, the editing process can be more emotional than many think.

For starters, we writers tend to believe that our work is masterful and should be good enough for anyone to see that.  It takes a thick skin to accept meaningful criticism, and it takes time to develop that thick skin.  Even proofreading can be hurtful at times since we either cringe from our mistakes, or we meant to write it in some way that looks to be in error because we think it reads better that way.

However, writers aren't the only ones with feelings that can get hurt.  Editors can get their knickers in a twist when you don't accept their suggestions.  This means less in the traditional world since the editor is a gatekeeper, and their edits tend to stand through to publishing.  For an indie writer, though, I can either accept or reject edits as I see fit, even on proofreading.

Interacting with editors in the past, I encountered some surprise(okay...shock) when I rejected a good number of their edits.  To be honest, I rejected most of the content edits unless the suggestion either made sense or was brought up by more than one person.  Still, I also rejected several proofreading edits where I felt the text read better, or I was going for something specific in why I wrote the piss-poor way I did.

You'd have thought I lit a porta-pottie on fire.

The biggest bonus to being an indie writer is it's my product.  I don't have to accept anything suggested.  I know this sounds like ego, especially in light of what I wrote above about we authors thinking we're wonderful writers most of the time anyway, but there really is a method to the madness.  I review each edit, and if it makes sense, I incorporate it.  But I know best what I'm trying to say, and I get final say.  Not all authors can say that, but I can.  And it's freeing.

Now all I have to worry about is finding an editor with a skin as thick as mine...