\tA few years ago when I was working on one of my books, I got an email from my overworked editor in London. The copy editor in New York didn\u2019t like one of my sentences and had proposed a change. My London Editor suspected that the change was not in keeping with what I had intended and so she wrote and asked me about it. She was certainly correct; the change proposed by New York was not something I could live with.<\/p>\n
\tRather than getting into a perhaps fruitless argument with the copy editor, however, I suggested a somewhat simple change that my London editor agreed would likely make New York happy. My point remained in the remainder of the paragraph, so nothing would be lost, but the change I suggested would mollify the copy editor. Getting a book done requires a lot of compromising, given the number of hands involved in the process.<\/p>\n
\tUnfortunately, my suggested change wound up shortening the sentence by twelve words. That meant that my London editor now had blank space that needed filling. After another couple of emails\u2014as well as offering clarification on the point I was attempting to make in the sentence in question\u2014I came up with a rewrite of the first three sentences that added the necessary words and solved the problem.
\nAs usual, my London editor was very apologetic through the whole process and wrote me, \u201csorry to be such a pain.\u201d As if it\u2019s her fault. It\u2019s the copy editor in New York who seems to have forgotten that it\u2019s not her name on the cover of the book. <\/p>\n
\tEveryone\u2019s a critic, after all. <\/p>\n
I get letters. Often times they are not very nice. Of course, as one of my friends pointed out, most people write letters to the editor, or to stores, or, in my case, to authors, only if they are angry with them. In 2008 I registered my last name as a domain on the web and put up an official author\u2019s website, together with a different email address based on that domain name. That way people who read my books can find out about the other books I\u2019ve done and perhaps find out a little more about me if they are so inclined. Most authors have websites; they are a useful marketing tool. My author friends had been bugging me to do this for quite some time.<\/p>\n
\tThe very first email to that new email address associated with my website was not from a fan. Quite the opposite.<\/p>\n
I was particularly amused by one sentence from my critic: \u201cNo! I am not a crack pot … that slang would better be applied to you and your works.\u201d That sentence was actually one of the less nasty of the many sentences I had to endure\u2014sentences which consisted of a series of negative assertions about my character. As my wife and those with whom I shared the wonderful missive commented, \u201chow is it that someone can accuse you of things that are so completely opposite of who and what you actually are?\u201d I\u2019ve had letters before and after accusing me of all manner of character flaws, sometimes laced with profanity or even death threats. This first to my new email address lacked both the vulgar language and the death threats, thankfully.<\/p>\n
\tWhen people don\u2019t know you, it is easy for them to fill in the blanks and project upon you all manner of things they don\u2019t like, that simply aren\u2019t so. As to why they do it, it is hard to say. I personally don\u2019t understand what motivates a person to go to the effort of writing a rude letter to a stranger. But then, I know it\u2019s easy to at least think unkind things about those who are close to us, whom we do know well. If someone forgets to call us on our birthday, how often do we assume that they no longer value their relationship with us, that in fact, they\u2019ve become our enemies and now probably hate us\u2014only to discover later that they left a message on our answering machine and the birthday card they sent us got delayed because it was inadvertently delivered to our neighbor by mistake? It is very easy to misread the intentions of our closest friends and family. But that reality doesn\u2019t often intrude upon the thoughts of those who write mean-spirited letters and then shake their fingers and tell us that they are not a crackpot. <\/p>\n
\tUnlike letters from my editors asking me change something, I never bother to respond to letters from cranks\u2014except perhaps to chuckle as I drop them in the trash.<\/p>\n
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