{"id":92,"date":"2010-11-02T11:32:23","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T11:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/2010\/11\/thank-you-jane-austens-editor-today-is-hug-your-editor-day.html"},"modified":"2010-11-02T11:32:23","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T11:32:23","slug":"thank-you-jane-austens-editor-today-is-hug-your-editor-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2010\/11\/thank-you-jane-austens-editor-today-is-hug-your-editor-day.html","title":{"rendered":"Thank You, Jane Austen&#8217;s Editor! Today Is Hug Your Editor Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"jane-austen_custom.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/83\/import\/jane-austen_custom.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0pt 20px 20px 0pt\" height=\"256\" width=\"300\" \/><\/span>It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fledgling author in possession of raw talent must be in want of an editor. <\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what we now know about Jane Austen, one of the world&#8217;s (and my) favorite novelists. Although her brother famously claimed that her books poured out finished from her pen, a careful scholarly study of her manuscripts reveals that even Queen Jane benefited from the careful expertise of a gifted editor. You can read about the scholarly discovery <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=130838304\">here at NPR<\/a>, and you can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.janeausten.ac.uk\/index.html\">peruse Austen&#8217;s original manuscripts here<\/a> and compare them to the famously polished printed works.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, as a professional editor, I&#8217;m tickled by this. One of my authors put me on to the story with the compliment that &#8220;editors are the geniuses behind good books.&#8221; Thanks! I have declared November 2 &#8220;Hug Your Editor Day,&#8221; because as far as I know, we don&#8217;t have a day to call our own. <\/p>\n<p>So I hereby send virtual flowers to the editor at Bloomsbury who recognized J.K. Rowling&#8217;s immense talent and accepted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Harry-Potter-Philosophers-Stone-Rowling\/dp\/155192398X\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1288705914&amp;sr=8-1\"><i>Harry Potter and the Philosopher&#8217;s Stone<\/i><\/a> when no one else would. And this is me hugging <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=chaim+potok+wikipedia&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a\">Chaim Potok<\/a>&#8216;s editor for believing that American readers would be smart enough to see the universal in the particular. Oh, and I remove my hat in the presence of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Herman_Melville\">Herman Melville<\/a>&#8216;s editor, even though I think he could have cut that chapter on the uses of whale blubber.<\/p>\n<p>Hug your editor today! &nbsp; &nbsp; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fledgling author in possession of raw talent must be in want of an editor. That&#8217;s what we now know about Jane Austen, one of the world&#8217;s (and my) favorite novelists. Although her brother famously claimed that her books poured out finished from her pen, a careful scholarly&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-commentary","category-getting-published"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Thank You, Jane Austen&#039;s Editor! Today Is Hug Your Editor Day - Flunking Sainthood<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2010\/11\/thank-you-jane-austens-editor-today-is-hug-your-editor-day.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thank You, Jane Austen&#039;s Editor! Today Is Hug Your Editor Day - Flunking Sainthood\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fledgling author in possession of raw talent must be in want of an editor. That&#8217;s what we now know about Jane Austen, one of the world&#8217;s (and my) favorite novelists. Although her brother famously claimed that her books poured out finished from her pen, a careful scholarly&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2010\/11\/thank-you-jane-austens-editor-today-is-hug-your-editor-day.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Flunking Sainthood\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-11-02T11:32:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/files\/import\/jane-austen_custom.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jana Riess\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Thank You, Jane Austen's Editor! 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