I try to mention that fact -- that tastes vary a lot, and that a stylistic quirk that bugs me might make another editor plotz (as in "an egg salad recipe so good, it could make you plotz", the McGuffin in Woody Allen's redubbed Japanese spy movie, "What's Up Tiger Lily?") from sheer joy. On the other hand, I also try to give what I consider to be generally valid advice (e.g., first-person present tense is very hard to do well -- especially if the narrator dies!). And if the grammar and sentence structure make my head hurt, I can be pretty harsh.RHFay wrote:...it may be sacrilege, but I don't feel that editors walk on water. I believe that they CAN be wrong on occasion, that they CAN let their personal preferences shade their views, just like the rest of us. And some may plain dislike your style, while putting an editorial sheen on that dislike to make it look like literary criticism.
But some of my victims keep returning to the torture chamber, so I guess I'm not quite bad enough to merit assassination.
(Yikes! What are the odds that a molotov cocktail would fly through my window at that very moment? Now, I'd have to say that a coincidence like that probably takes the reader right out of the story (it's hard to stay immersed in another world while snorting hard enough to make snot come out of your ears), and reject this whole post...)