Can an author review their own work?

parthianbow · Post by **parthianbow** » Tue November 20th, 2012, 10:17 pm

This chap thinks he can! Try to read all the posts - some are so incredible that I don't know how to react - so I haven't. Either this guy is taking the p*ss completely, or he's deranged. You decide!

MLE (Emily Cotton) · Post by **MLE (Emily Cotton)** » Wed November 21st, 2012, 12:42 am

Sure sounds like he's a taco shy of a combo plate.

DianeL · Post by **DianeL** » Wed November 21st, 2012, 2:03 am

I'm almost wondering whether this is a joke - Michael Scott is the name of Steve Carell's wildly maladjusted character from the US version of "The Office." This would have been entirely his sort of game to play. I didn't go beyond these comments; is this definitely a real author?

annis · Post by **annis** » Wed November 21st, 2012, 2:13 am

What fun! I particularly enjoyed M.S.'s comment, "However, a reviewer's opinion contains the reviewer's own personal baggage. Some say a review says more about the reviewer than it does about the work." Er - the same can't be said about the author?!

sweetpotatoboy · Post by **sweetpotatoboy** » Wed November 21st, 2012, 10:48 am

Deluded, no?

This is a bit like my line of work as an editor. It's always the writers that need the most editing that insist: "I don't need an editor." To which, my response is (a polite form of): "You're not the best judge of that."

Helen_Davis · Post by **Helen_Davis** » Wed November 21st, 2012, 10:36 pm

Is this a joke? As for editing, I prefer to edit my own work, but I realize editors can help a lot!

parthianbow · Post by **parthianbow** » Thu November 22nd, 2012, 3:34 pm

[quote=""sweetpotatoboy""] It's always the writers that need the most editing that insist: "I don't need an editor." To which, my response is (a polite form of): "You're not the best judge of that."[/quote]

As a reader (now trained as a writer), I began to think that as authors get 'bigger', there is a tendency for their books to become overblown and in need of an edit. Think George RR Martin as his series progresses. Think Colleen McCullough's Rome series.

Wondering if I was imagining this, I asked my editor if she had any thoughts on the matter. She told me that it's very common indeed for authors (once 'big' enough) to refuse to allow their books to be edited. In other words, they acquire the ability to edit their own books. Remarkable and of course ridiculous. It's nothing more than growing too big for one's boots. After the success of The Thornbirds, McCullough had become so popular that she refused to allow anyone to touch her manuscripts once they were 'finished' (in other words, her whole Rome series). My editor said merrily to me that I would become like that one day, to which I replied that she was to take me out and shoot me if I ever did such a thing. Everyone needs an editor. Everyone, even McCullough or GRRM.

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Thu November 22nd, 2012, 5:02 pm

Or Jean Auel.

annis · Post by **annis** » Fri November 23rd, 2012, 1:07 am

Posted by Ben

Think Colleen McCullough's Rome series.

Hurray, glad to see I'm not the only heretic who thinks McCcullough's Rome series is seriously overblown and could have done with some rigorous, intelligent pruning

DianeL · Post by **DianeL** » Fri November 23rd, 2012, 1:18 am

It's funny the Masters of Rome series is coming up; I actually picked it back up recently. 20 or more years ago, I loved First Man and Grass Crown, BUT I petered out badly at Caesar's Women and never managed to get into October Horse, though it was given me in hardback. So Women and Horse went with me to work recently as my lunch-hour books.

While the stories are still fascinating, yes, it's genuinely remarkable how very badly in need of editing these are. Exposition overmasters story on every single page, and not even in the function of necessary backstory - just because she's so in love with the history she wants to know she has come to know so intimately. When I knew *nothing* at all about Gaius Marius and Sulla (and was half the age I am now and had either less discernment or more patience), that exposition didn't bother me - but now it is a heck of a slog. The hyper-expositive mental monologues are exceptionally tedious. It takes a page and a half to express "Caesar didn't like Bibulus" because McCullough finds it necessary to reiterate, in no less detail than originally told, a story she covered in her last book about how Caesar humiliated "the Flea" (and nicknamed him The Flea) and everyone going back eighteen generations to whom The Flea is related by blood - AND we also have to set the scene by detailing with painstaking recreative accuracy every single building nearby, as well as its history and the character of particular people associated with its building, function, or peculiar relationship to Republican history ...

And someone probably needs to edit me right here and now.

Still, all this said - I still think "Michael Scott" is a joke.