Myste wrote:I think it would be okay...Joy, what do you think? In formal publishing, there's usually an author approval process after copyediting.
The reason I hesitate is that many people take edits very personally ("God forbid the Philistines tamper with my deathless prose!!!") rather than seeing them as the editor's way of making the work better. I guess I'm worried that Joy (or I) will put a lot of time and effort into editing these pieces, only to get them back from the author with all our suggested changes rejected. I'd really like to avoid that if possible.
I agree with Myste on this. Part of writing is conveying the desired ideas to the reader, and if the reader (the editor, in this case), doesn't get the ideas the writer is trying to put across, the editor will be trying to help the writer convey his/her ideas more clearly.
As I already told VS, I know what it's like to see my writing turned into someone else's writing by an editor who thought she was a co-writer, and I don't want to do that to anyone else. In the editing process, the editor represents the reader's viewpoint, and also acts as an interpreter if needed. The story is the writer's.