Edit him Before he Writes Again

I used to enjoy reading Stephen King books, that is, I used to enjoy his earlier books when there were publishers who dared to still edit him. I've got a secret for you: As much as I've enjoyed his books, he writes a lot of crap. The problem these days is that there isn't anyone who can tell him to take the crap out, so it stays in - every crappy word.

He's written a whole bunch of really great three to four hundred page novels in the last few years, but the problem is he took twelve hundred pages to write each of them. I'm thinking of IT, The Stand, DreamCatcher.

I couldn't believe that I had gotten six hundred pages into a book and he was still introducing more effing characters when he already had about thirty and I couldn't remember who they all were. That was The Stand I think. Or It. It applies to both, anyways.

Okay. He's not the only artist that applies to that gets to do what they want unchecked because they're too big and almighty. George Lucas is another. The first three Star Wars movies were so special and so wonderful and they were that way partly because there was a studio that kept him on track and kept asking the question of why people would be interested in what he had to say.

The last three Star Wars? Nope. Why on Earth did he think that senate debates, even Sci Fi CGI senate debates would be interesting? Or Jedi Sub-committee meetings or trade delegation negotiations? You absolutely know that in real life Lucas is a grumpy old set-in-his-ways bachelor who thinks C-Span is a good way to spend a Saturday night.

And you know what I think about the last Star Wars scripts? I heard that he hired somebody to write them, which I think happened and they were great. Then Lucas personally rewrote them so they were boring again. Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) famously said about his dialogue: "You can type this stuff, but you can't speak it." She should know. One of her post-princess jobs was as a highly paid 'Script Doctor'.

I'll give one more example, from the world of music this time:Prince. He used to be good, didn't he? Every note he wrote in Purple Rain is perfect and I still listen to that album from time to time. After that, he put out a lot of stuff and very little of it was listenable. Why? Nobody told him that people didn't want to hear every single thing that came into his head. Prince is famed as being a prolific artist and, boy, he comes out with some gems but the problem with finding gems - to torture my metaphor a bit - is that you have to sift through a lot of dirt. People don't want to hear your dirt.

There really is a point in an artists life - no matter what their field - when they have the opportunity to jump the shark and thumb their noses at their audiences. Sure, you do art for yourself and that's fine - do your art. But you shouldn't expect anybody else to pay for your self-indulgence and you need somebody to critically sift the wheat from the chaff. You know, an editor. That's what they're there for, Stephen.