EDITOR’S NOTE: For this installment in Storyboard’s occasional series on effective editing, we bring readers a conversation with an independent editor who works one-on-one with writers and has built a suite of services on his own.
Glenn Stout was about 14 when he read a poem by Langston Hughes. “That hit me over the head with a two-by-four, and I decided I wanted to be a writer,” he said.
He went on to work for his high school newspaper, then attended Bard College, where he wrote poetry. He eventually took a job at the Boston Public Library, hoping to be surrounded by people interested in words. There, he stumbled upon a story about the Boston Red Sox manager from 1907 who had died by suicide. He pitched a story about it to Boston Magazine, where an editor took a chance on him. “I’ve never been without an assignment since,” Stout said.
Now 66, Stout went on to establish himself as an freelance writer and author of nonfiction books, including “The Young Woman and the Sea.” Many in journalism know him for his many years working on an annual collection of the best sports writing.
Along the way, Stout also has built skills and a following as a coach, consultant and freelance editor, often working with writers who are developing their own book proposals and manuscripts.
Storyboard spoke with Stout about the nuances of being an independent editor, how he thinks about the psychology of writers and the gap his services fill in a changing literary landscape. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What prompted your shift toward editing?
It was word of mouth through the handful of writers, particularly through selecting stories for “The Best American Sports Writing.” People would ask for my thoughts on their work and it snowballed from there. I was old enough, or far enough along in my career, that I wasn’t concerned about what this business did for me; I took a great deal of satisfaction in seeing what it could do for other people. I got more gratification from somebody else’s story succeeding than from my own. I love helping someone who’s having trouble and doesn’t think they can do something get to a place where they can do it, and do so more on their own the next time — where they don’t need a person like me.
Where did you learn and who were editors who inspired you early on?
Ken Hartnett, who commissioned my first story when he was an editor at Boston Magazine, offered a good lesson: He took me seriously. I had no clips. I was nobody. Other than that, I never felt I was edited well. So when I started editing, I didn’t try to do it like anybody else; I tried to do it the way I thought it should have been done for me.
How should it be done?
One of the most important things for a writer in an editing relationship is to be given confidence and agency over their work. When I first begin a project, I tell writers directly: ‘This works best when it’s a collaboration. When we work together, the reader does not care how we get to the end. They want a positive reading experience. They want to take something away. … Everything I tell you is suggestive. At the end of this process, if you cannot stand behind every word on the page, I failed. I’m in service of you, the writer; you’re not in service of me. Don’t try to make me happy. Let’s try to find a place where the story can best be unfurled, in the best possible way.’
Many writers are unaccustomed to that kind of agency. Too many writers are beaten down by the editorial process where you write a story, you send it in, no one responds for six weeks, you get an edit back, you send it back in, then another editor responds with a totally contradictory reaction. This goes on and on for months.
It’s disrespectful when an editor doesn’t get back to someone. They can answer an email in 15 seconds. If an editor says they’re overwhelmed and can’t answer an email, then they are overwhelmed by their job and need to get a different one.
You said your editing comes out of the vacuum of writers whose editing needs are not being met. Can you elaborate?
I’m filling in gaps. I’ve seen a real shift over the last 10 years, particularly the last five years. I hear over and over that writers are not getting useful feedback from their editors, whether it’s in books or magazines. Everybody has cut back and has a fire hose of work. Editors are overwhelmed. They can’t give feedback the way they want to because they’ve got too much to do.
Twenty years ago, writers got feedback from editors or agents when working on a book proposal. Agents these days rarely put in much time when a writer is creating a book proposal. I tell writers who want to pursue books to pitch their idea. But if an agent likes it, the first question they’ll ask is: ‘Do you have a proposal?’ If the writer says they’ll have one in three months, by then that agent has forgotten about them. Writers need to have the proposal ready. It’s a real risk: Someone writes a whole proposal and there’s no guarantee an agent will accept it, but the agent isn’t going to help you with it either.
When I work with writers on proposals, we know the agent is always going to change something. But we’re giving them something to work with. Agents don’t have the time, like I do, to spend with a writer turning an idea into a tangible object.
What makes for strong chemistry between writers and editors?
Being upfront and honest at the beginning. I try to explain how I like to work and how this process should work: I’m there to serve the writer and they don’t have to accept my changes. If I make a suggestion, I might have identified something that needs to be changed, but the writer might have a better idea how to fix it. The worst is when a writer questions themselves every sentence. Let it rip. Get something on the page. We can work with something once it’s on the page, so I don’t want them to worry about being wrong. We’re not going to go over it just once or twice; we might go over it 15 times.
You talk about confidence and mindset. How do you see coaching versus editing?
It’s pretty much one and the same, whether I call it editing or coaching. Editing is more if someone shows me their copy and asks me to fix it, whereas coaching is when we’re riding along the story at the same time, sharing the saddle. I don’t know if it’s easier, but it’s more comfortable if the writer and I are together from story conception to the end, rather than jumping in when there’s already a manuscript. I prefer being together at the beginning because then we can have discussions and pre-revise before having written. We’re agreeing on a set of parameters: where the story’s going, what the writer is focusing on. When I come in later in the process, the writer has already made a lot of decisions. The reporting is done or there’s a deadline.
Often, I work with writers who feel like they’re not getting feedback from the editor they’re working with, so they come to me and say: ‘Here’s what the editor is telling me. I don’t understand what they mean.’ I don’t get in between the writer and editor they’re working for. But I work with the writer to try to get the work to where they want it, which is maybe closer to what the editor wants.
How do you establish that rapport with a new writer or a new-to-you writer?
I work with a lot of people over and over again, which is nice because you’ve got the shorthand and trust down. For instance, when I say ‘This sentence is really chewy,’ they know I mean they’re trying to cram too many ideas into one sentence. Too many phrases. It’s too clunky.
With somebody I haven’t worked with before, I have to bring them along. I just react to a piece in my first edit. I don’t do a whole lot of line editing, but mostly make comments and questions. ‘This works.’ ‘I don’t understand this.’ ‘Who is this person?’ I take it in stages, and every stage builds more trust. Then I always, always find things I like. That’s hugely important. No one likes to get a manuscript back that is just criticism. And I give them practical solutions — very simple, practical things they can do.
What are the qualities of your favorite writers to edit?
I really like working with writers who are willing to try things they haven’t done before. I have fun working with people where there’s enough trust that they don’t care what I do and I don’t care what they do: We’re focused on the end. With some writers, I become pretty adept at channeling them. I’ll read something and add a sentence and tell them: ‘I hear this here. I think this is where you meant to go. You might write this sentence better, but I think you need another beat here.’ At the end of the day, sometimes we can’t tell where the lines were between me and them. When I’m intimately involved in the text, I start to hear words the way the writer hears words.
How has your editing work affected your writing? Are you typically pursuing book projects and editing simultaneously?
For much of the last 10 or 15 years, I was editing while working on my own book projects. It’s funny — I really don’t think I knew what I was doing as a writer until I started helping other people write. I had been blindly going forward — not that I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing, but I wasn’t aware of what I could do as a writer. Through working with other people, I gained an awareness of things I could try because I’ve seen other people try them. I’ve also seen how you can tear something up entirely, if you need to, and build it back. That’s not an act of destruction; it’s an act of creation.
Other advice I share with writers: if you see what somebody else is doing, particularly structurally, it’s OK to copy structure.
How have you seen that play out?
I had an older writer, in his mid-40s, who was transitioning from shorter features to 3,000-word features. For his first big story, I told him to take a story similar in some way to his, not necessarily in subject matter but in format: ‘Look at it closely paragraph by paragraph, and do exactly what that other writer did,’ like starting with a quote, or following with a scene or expository writing. He did the most extraordinary thing: He sent me back his story, paragraph by paragraph, alternating with the one he was modeling.
If people have a hard time coming up with a lede, I tell them to read 25 ledes. One will spark the lede they want to do and help crack the story open a bit. W.C. Heinz, the great sportswriter, once told me he thought the beginning was the most important part. He was a classical music fan, and he said the beginning of a story was where he set the time signature and key. ‘Then I know where I can go with the rest,’ he said.
It was such a great metaphor. A writer sets up the bounds of the story very early — the tone, the voice. Every story has a different sound, a different vocabulary. A writer has to find what’s right for that story. There’s an organic nature to this work that comes from within the story itself; it’s not always a top-down process where you have a structure and make the story fit it. If you have to ‘make’ the story fit something, that’s not following the truth of the story.
What message would you send to folks without formal training, like you all those years ago, who want to sharpen their editing skills?
Once you start to do it, you’ll learn pretty quickly if you can. That’s a very murky response, but you’ll realize pretty quickly that if you don’t have anything to say about a text, then you probably shouldn’t be trying to do this. If you see a text and can see not just what’s on the page, but the possibilities of what’s on the page, then you should be doing this.
I used to tell writers that my biggest test was when I’d open a piece of writing with my morning cup of coffee. If I drink my coffee and go make a second cup, we’ve got issues. If I only have one cup, we’re getting somewhere. If I don’t finish the coffee, we really have something going. If the coffee turns cold and I don’t touch it, the writer has something really good. As an editor, it’s important to know the difference between those things. Never edit just to edit. Some of the best editing jobs I’ve ever done have been the pieces of work that I’ve edited the least.
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Carly Stern is an award-winning enterprise journalist based in San Francisco who covers health, housing and economic security.
