My goal as an editor is to make my magazine as good as possible. I’ve used my own phrasing in edits to suggest a direction, and when those phrases are more than minor tweaks I’d probably be appalled if the author used those phrases. It’s the author’s voice that got me into the story in the first place.

I have an idea of how a story should read, and people whose stories I’ve accepted probably have similar ideas. But we sometimes run stories with lives of their own that we don’t know how to edit. For the latest issue of Swill, I contacted one author to ask him about his paragraph formatting – I’d started to mark it up when it occurred to me that I might be wrecking the rhythm of the whole piece. After checking with him, I left the bulk of the story alone.

Hell, I don’t want to leave footprints. I got ugly feet.

What “leave no footprints” really means, I’d venture, is “a good editor should recognize and respect the author’s voice.”

I’ll go to my grave before anybody convinces me that’s not true.

Granted, nine out of ten novels that cross my desk don’t have much voice to begin with. For them, it’s my job to help the writers see where and how they can improve their craft, so maybe they’ll develop a voice.

But when that tenth novel comes along, the voice jumps off the page. It’s clear as day, and it’s a wonderful thing. I should hang my head in shame if I screwed with the author’s voice.

A good editor doesn’t edit everything they see such that it ends up sounding like they wrote it. A good editor should recognize and respect the voice of the author, and know how not to screw that up.

A great editor, further, is enough of a chameleon themselves to be able to take on the author’s voice while editing. A great author not only recognizes and respects the author’s voice, but can actually enhance it while leaving the heart of it intact.