[Steven Lake]

shibamistress, Freeshadow: I'm not saying I wouldn't take their changes. I love feedback and I'm happy to change something if it's wrong. What I'm against is a full on changing of the story. Case in point. The guy who wrote "Escape from Dachau" created a fiction story based around the true life experiences of his great grandpa. In the book (just as in real life), his Grandpa was one of the few people to ever escape from Dachau, and the only one to ever successfully avoid recapture. He eventually made it across Germany and reached allied lines where he was captured by the allies and treated as a German spy for three years.

His original publisher wanted him to take the core of the story and scrap it, and then rewrite it as a love triangle that developed inside the camp which went seriously wrong shortly after they escaped. They then wanted him to kill off the hero (his grandpa) at the hands of one of the women who in turn dies at the hand of the second woman who then manages to escape to freedom behind allied lines. In other words, they wanted to completely butcher his story. *THAT* is the type of editing I *DO NOT* want.

Now if you're taking about normal editing work, things like fixing grammar, spelling, plot holes, story flow, etc, that's fine. I'm all for that in spades. In fact, I enjoy critical feedback like that. However, I *DO NOT* want someone going in and butchering my story by forcing me to rewrite it into their image of perfection. Take my Earthfleet saga for example. If a big house got a hold of it, they'd likely have turned the Gayik'Von into cliche enemies of Earth rather than allies, and the Varok from fish guys into brain sucking zombie robots or something. Get the picture? I don't mind editors fixing problems. It's when they step in and start doing hack, slash and burn wholesale rewrites that I have issues.

If the story can't stand on its own the way it is (minus minor editing to fix problems), then it doesn't need to be published. It's why I went with my present publisher. They suggested minor fixes and otherwise left the story untouched. As a result I've already won at least one literary award, and have another possible 3 more coming down the pipe. I don't think I would have gotten that if it had gone through the puppy mill meat grinder editing that happens at the big houses. Trust me when I say that the big houses don't want original novels. They want rubber stamped, puppy milled, formulaic books that are about as original as a lead brick. And if you don't fit that model, then they force you to rewrite your book so that you do.