JKR - no editor?

[Wanda Sherratt]

No: HPFGUIDX 73599

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboy_mn at y...> wrote:
> 
> So, I blame a certain amount of the lack of refinement in the book 
to
> the rushed editing process, and that is compounded by the fact, or 
at
> least my impression as fact, that this book had many many setups 
for
> the future stories that had to be squeezed into the story somehow. 
You
> be surprised how hard it can be sometimes, just to get one plot 
point
> into a story. I onces wrote three very long chapters trying to
> maneuver the story into a situation where it gave a single 
charater a
> chance to say one line.
> 
I think that you've made excellent points.  I firmly believe that a 
LOT of OotP is camouflage, put there to surround the plot points and 
not make them too obvious.  There is a saying I read once, and I'm 
not sure what it originally referred to (but I think it might have 
been in a murder mystery) but it goes: "Where do you hide a leaf? In 
a tree.  And where do you hide a tree?  In a forest.  And if you 
have no forest?  You make a forest.  And if it is a dead tree, you 
make a dead forest."  So I do see that some of the padding in OotP 
is there for effect - but I still think that it's not very 
artistically done.

There may have been time issues when it came to editing, but I also 
get the feeling that Rowling has some "control" tendencies - all the 
stuff about not allowing reviewers advance copies, not allowing 
translators to start working on the book before its release, suing 
newspapers which let out plot points two days before release.  I 
think that when a writer gets to be as rich and important as she is, 
she gets to set the terms, and as you pointed out, writers are not 
always the best judges of their own work.  I think this book would 
have been better if it had been properly edited; and if it was just 
a time issue, then hopefully that will be taken into account with 
the next two books, and it won't happen again.  If Book 6 turns out 
to be 1200 pages, and as diffuse as Book 5, then I'll be pretty sure 
that it's because Rowling is not allowing her editors to do their 
job.

Wanda