Oh, wait, this is even better.

And no, I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself. I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art

Because copy-editing is for amateurs.

I wonder what Anne Rice thinks of George Lucas's movies?

when one is writing one does have to continuously and courageously fight a destructive tendency to inhibition and restraint.

Although there's a kernel of truth in here, relating to the school of thought that posits the writer as a cruel/necessary traitor to privacy, generally speaking anyone who calls herself "courageous" needs to take a long walk off a short pier.

Also? Too many adjectives and adverbs in that sentence. So, kind of QED for the second quote.

Dear God, Anne Rice is so unbelievably arrogant.

Anne Rice is so unbelievably arrogant

And popular, so it must work for somebody.

I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art

I like that bit.

And popular, so it must work for somebody.

Yes, well, there are also people who think The Bridges of Madison County is both good literature as well as an ideal to aspire to in one's life. So....

t rolls eyes

If this is the stance she takes, no wonder her writing is so unbearably florid. There's believing in your convictions, then there's narcissistic public wanking. Bah.

For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art

Look, life is a collaborative art. Rice is saying that she's never wrong.

In every situation in which I've worked with an editor, some of the editorial changes have been wrong, and I didn't make them. Some of them, on the other hand, were embarrassingly right. Rice is saying she can't bear any other human being to judge her work; that may be true, but it doesn't mean another human being's input wouldn't improve the work.

Hell, she had to get her kneepads somewhere, right? Oh, right, that was all *talent*. Sure. And I'm a Junior League member.

Anne Rice: Bwah-hah-haw snork! I can just imagine her sailing along, nose in the air, ignoring the copy editor pointing at the end of that short pier she's approaching. Her art is so great, she's beyond accepting input? My hind foot, sez one who used to buy her novels.

My little sister named her cat Mehitabel after archy & mehitabel. She was only about 8 then, so we were proud of her for noticing literature.

I have here in my hot little hands: The John Varley Reader. So what if I have original paperbacks containing most of the stories? There's new stuff in there.

Eh, I think Anne's a poor judge of her own writing then, but I can't begrudge her resistance to editing. I hate having an editor fuck with my stuff. If you've been blessed with good editors, then you're damn lucky, because there are plenty out there with all the subtly of a butcher taking apart a pig. (And so much of it is a matter of taste - are you going to tell Faulkner he's got too many adjectives and adverbs? That's part of his style, dense though it is. It's like bitching Van Gogh out for using impasto: "I can't really see their faces when you do it this way.")

I don't disagree with the assessment that Anne's writing needs editing, but I think it's absolutely normal for a creator to want to retain control over their work. Nobody would consider it unduly egotistical if a painter insisted on doing all the painting on the canvas. In fact, it would be considered unusual otherwise. Nobody expects Aaron Copland to change his score because somebody who is not even a composer thinks he should pick up the tempo in the third movement.

Do you think writing is a special case? I can see that argument, but I can't imagine the person who knows James Joyce's prose better than James Joyce. Obviously Joyce does not equal Rice, but she's clearly claiming she's the expert in Anne Rice Writing (for better or worse) and I don't think that's really very different.

Undoubtedly a good editor can make a huge positive difference in writing. I think being open to a good critic can be valuable for any creator. Personally, I value feedback and I know many of you depend on your beta readers. Still, I don't think it's particularly arrogant of her to not want to be edited. Just misguided.