"Why is my editor ghosting me?"

This is the single most common, gnarly professional conflict that comes up in book publishing. If you're an author stuck in it right now, here's the closest thing I have to professional Goo-Gone.

It’s been eight months.

It’s been ten months.

It’s been a year.

He said he was only going to take a month to get back to me.

She said we’d be putting the manuscript into production before the holidays.

Are these delays going to affect my pub date?

I’m so confused. I’m so angry.

We’ve been working on this proposal for two years. You said you wanted to aim for a January submission, and now it’s June.

This is really beginning to feel personal.

Am I just not a priority?

I can’t schedule anything in my life right now because I have no idea when I’m going to need to go back into the manuscript full-time.

I feel so disrespected.

What is HAPPENING?

*

Of all the professional conflicts I mediate as a literary agent, the ones I despise most are the Editorial Stuckness Breakdowns. Because I am lazy, I will henceforth refer to them as ESBs.

An ESB involves three key developments:

• An author submits pages to some kind of editor¹—to their in-house editor if they’re under contract; to their agent if pre-submission.

• The editor takes way, way longer than anticipated or promised to offer feedback—and when (if) it ever appears, said feedback is often unusable in some way (vague, contradictory, off-base).

• The unanticipated loss of momentum and direction causes the author significant distress.

Why do you despise ESBs so much?

OH, LET ME COUNT THE WAYS:

• ESBs are by far the most common kind of conflict I deal with, especially since 2020 — to the extent that I suspect at least eight of you reading this will think I am subtweeting your specific, recent experiences. I am and I’m not. THEY’RE REALLY THAT COMMON.

• They’re agonizingly complicated to address, typically involving a Gordian knot of causal factors.

• They trigger significant stress reactions for everyone involved.

• Untangling ESBs without doing significant damage to professional relationships and/or books can feel like defusing a bomb. And even if you and the author do everything “right,” the bomb occasionally blows up.

• As much as I hate ESBs, I know from experience that most occur for rational, important, as-yet-subconscious reasons. I am bolding this because it’s very important you know this.

• It therefore deeply benefits all parties in an ESB to pay close, curious attention to these developments; refrain from shaming and blaming each other; figure what’s going on, even if it’s something surprising and difficult; and thenceforth take whatever course-corrective collaborative action is called for.

• What’s called for varies, but it’s almost always profoundly disruptive in some way.

Well this all sounds horrible. How on Earth can I avoid getting mired in an ESB?

I’m afraid you can’t.

If you’re an author with an agent and a realistic chance of publishing more than one commercial book in the future, you’re going to experience an ESB at some point. They’re so common now as to be (I suspect) a statistical inevitability.

Rather than give you false hope that successful authors can avoid ESBs, I am going to give you a little first-aid guide for getting yourself and your colleagues back up and functioning when they do. WHEN.

The guide is in three parts. You will learn to recognize ESBs when they’re in progress. You will discover—if you don’t know already—that ESBs are generally more complicated and professionally useful than they look.

Finally, you will embrace the paradox at the heart of ESB management: getting the best outcomes from one requires us to let go of all attempts to control what those best outcomes are.

For what it’s worth: I need this guide as much as you do. ESBs are a kind of irrational dynamic triggered by stress and trauma; they make all of us forgetful and stupid. Consider the following more of a tool than a talisman, meant to be picked up again and again vs. touched once to effect lifelong transformation.

Okay: LET’S GO.

Instructions I gave to Dall-E 2 for this one: “an editor and a writer intractably stuck over their collaborative work product, style of andrew wyeth”

A Field Guide to Common ESBs

Any time an author feels their editor is flaking, ghosting, freezing, losing interest, or giving them the run-around, an ESB is underway.

The proceedings tend to unfold in one or more of the following ways:

GROUNDHOG DAY

Turning in their material, the author shoots the editor an email: “what should I expect now?”

The editor suggests a phone call. The two of them have what feels like a great, reassuring conversation about what comes next, including when exactly the editor will return some feedback.

Afterward, the editor may or may not follow up with breezy and confident-sounding email: to confirm, I will get edits back to you by x date; you turn around responses by y; bada bing, bada boom, published book next year.

X date comes and goes. Crickets.

Days to weeks pass. An increasingly anxious author finally gives in and sends a “just checking in” email asking the same question as before: “what should I expect now?”

Editor and author then “hop on the phone” to “get back on the same page.” All parties feel some reassurance after this call.

Guess what happens next! More blown deadlines, anxiety, and people-pleasing. Rinse and repeat. Over and over. For like six-plus months.

At some point, the author can’t take it anymore.

CHASING THE DRAGON

It’s not that the editor/agent isn’t responsive in this scenario. The problem is more that their feedback is a moving target. After a while, the author feels like Tennyson’s Ulysses, their publishing dreams resembling an arch wherethro’ gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades forever and forever while they move.

In one memo, the editor might say that this or that argument ought to go at the beginning of the book. In another, they think it ought to go at the end. Or maybe the middle? Or the beginning.

Perhaps the editor gives round after round of distressingly open-ended feedback. “The writing in this third of the manuscript needs to be sharper.” “Don’t explain so much.” “I’m just bored.”

If the book is under contract, it’s possible this editor has gone so far as to pull the project from its initial publication timeline over these concerns. They might justify this to the author as a chance for all parties to have unpressured time to figure out “the issues.” But the author isn’t even sure what the issues ARE. Not to mention the fact that they’ve already told their friends and family to expect a book next year. Ugh. Now they feel like a loser and a fraud.

JOANNE THE SCAMMER (CHEERLEADER SUBTYPE)

In this scenario, the editor’s initial reaction is something like “hey, just took a quick look—this is looking great so far! More soon!”

Followed by silence. For weeks to months.

At last, the promised feedback arrives. It is highly critical and generally of the “Chasing the Dragon” sort I just described: sweeping, open-ended, vague. Totally distressing.

Was the editor lying about having opened the file before?

JOANNE THE SCAMMER (SEMINAR BRO SUBTYPE)

This editor’s feedback demonstrates a tenuous or nonexistent grasp of key facts, stories, or developments they could have gathered by reading the manuscript. Their suggestions feel sweeping and confident but also desultory, as though they used bingo balls to pick a random page number and are now suggesting whole-book changes based on that page alone.

The whole thing reeks of that one dude in your literature seminar who never did the reading but sure did love the sound of his own voice.

HI: I’M DORY

The editor has iffy working memory, which sometimes leads her to contradict herself on her feedback between drafts. What is the author supposed to freaking do?

(This one might be me.)

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Any of the scenarios above take on this additional component when combined with personnel turnover: a new editor assigned to an author’s book after the acquiring one leaves, for example, or a change in agents after an unsuccessful first submission.

4’33”

I figured the John Cage reference would be cleverer and less distressing than saying “sometimes, editors just ghost.”

What causes an ESB

Every single one of the scenarios above is attributable primarily to two causal factors. These factors are ALWAYS present:

• There’s an issue with either the conception OR the execution of the book as it stands, but it’s stuck in someone’s subconscious (the author, the editor, or both). It’s wedged in the team dynamic like a splinter, causing significant discomfort and triggering maladaptive behavior.

• The editor’s executive function is currently burdened by chronic or acute stress, likely unrelated to the book project per se. This is interfering with their ability to communicate nuance and complexity in real time and make accurate time-based predictions.

Which of these two causal factors is more significant varies on a case-by-case basis, and they are typically accompanied by a host of others.

Still, these two factors are always present in some quantity. Always! And they’re usually the top two.

Yes, this is even the case with those Joanne the Scammer Seminar Bros who seem like they’re never doing the homework. Those people just have slightly more glib and annoying ego defense impulses than most.

What DOES NOT cause an ESB

Over the course of nearly 20 years in publishing, I have met plenty of editors and agents who are obnoxious. (MOST OF YOU ARE LOVELY, THO—LOVE YOOOU.)

I have met plenty who exhibit less-than-mature adaptations to psychological challenge, e.g. addiction, projection, codependency, and petty gossip.

HOWEVER: I have never, ever—not once—encountered anyone in my industry who:

• would rather dither and waste an author’s time than make money

• would rather not accomplish things than accomplish them

• loves having unfinished tasks on their desk

• hates authors

• hates what they do

• loves disappointing people

• loves making people angry

• arbitrarily sits on high-quality, publishable manuscripts and doesn’t let them sell…“just because”

• refuses to go full-throttle when a project is ready for the races… “just because”

• is actively trying to sabotage their own career or their authors’ (reminder: these are effectively the same thing)

• reacts to authorial fury, shame, and blame by relaxing, regaining their full executive function, and re-emerging as their full and best professional selves

• behaves not just in a maladaptive but purely irrational and deranged manner

• dissembles on purpose during the editorial process in order to mislead their authors and cover up entirely personal failures

“Oh, come on. You had me until the last one—but there’s no way you can convince me my editor isn’t trying to give me the run-around right now.”

There’s a chance I just don’t know that editor you’re thinking of. But I do know most of the editors who publish books for adult readers in big 5 or tony indie imprints—and I stand by what I said.

Editors (and all of us) make mistakes from time to time. And sure: in frailer moments, they sometimes try to jazz-hands their way out instead of fessing up. For example, they might forward me a fabulous foreign rights offer!!!! they’ve just accepted obo my client, hoping I don’t bring up the fact that they’re supposed to ask for approval.

This is garden-variety human frailty, though. Whereas to foment an entire ESB from deception and self-interest alone, an editor would have to be a psychopath—the literal, diagnosed kind. AFAIK, there are not any of those in our limited professional ranks. At least not right now.

That editor who seems to have eight billion excuses for why she hasn’t finished her edit yet? I’d bet you anything she’s not offering those in a conscious attempt to deceive you.

Excuse catechisms are a symptom of diminished executive function—i.e., one of the two causal factors I’ve already told you are always in play during an ESB.

Here’s what I mean by that. Brilliant, rigorous editing doesn’t require much executive function. It comes from the deep-thinking departments of an editor’s brain—one largely unaffected by day-to-day stressors.

What does require a lot of executive function, however, is surfacing and sharing one’s brilliance in concise language—explaining the “why” and the “how” behind the what one is doing.

The more complicated, nuanced, and dynamic the What, the more executive function required to articulate the Why and the How. And do you know what is fucking complicated, nuanced, and dynamic? An ESB!!

An editor in this position is likely as capable as ever of doing brilliant editorial work—but they will struggle to give authors updates, plans, or accurate time predictions. Such articulations put a HUGE cognitive load on executive function. They can be literally impossible for someone whose executive function is overtaxed by stress.

This is quite embarrassing to experience. Faced with a demand to explain complicated challenges at times of executive dysfunction, one has three miserable choices:

• not respond, dramatically escalating the other person’s anxiety and anger and therefore your own stress (vicious cycle)

• attempt to articulate the whole of what’s happening, a thing you know you aren’t capable of doing right now, feeling your soul exiting your body as what comes out of your mouth is not so much “words” as “sounds reminiscent of ogre in orgasm”

• articulate whatever parts of the truth you can: the simple, straightforward, and therefore cognitively untaxing parts. These tend to be the borderline-irrelevant background stressors: “I don’t have an assistant right now;” “my kids keep getting one virus after another.” These things are really in play, although of course they’re not the main Thing that’s the problem,.

The last option is what most editors go with, and it drives authors NUTS.

Authors aren’t stupid. When ESBs happen, they’re generally as aware as editors that there’s an unnamed editorial Thing in play. The editors’ litany of background stresses therefore does not read as “all the honesty the editor is physically capable of putting into words right now” so much as “a bunch of bullshit excuses.”

For your professional benefit and all of our sanity, I beg you to regard editors’ excuse litanies with empathy—or better yet, not demand them in the first place.

What you’re looking at is likely a person experiencing a neurocognitive electrical short, offering what dim emergency lights she can until necessary repairs are complete. This is not the same thing as deliberately keeping you in the dark.

Now let’s talk about how to get unstuck from an ESB.

I could talk all day about what’s really going on underneath the surface in these situations—trauma repetition, clashing attachment styles, etc. etc. etc. But honestly? None of that is really important for our purposes; investigating causation rarely is. This isn’t a plane crash, and we’re not the NTSB. People are different and sometimes trigger each other. News at 10.

What is important: remember that ESBs are always caused by at minimum the two factors I mentioned above: 1. some kind of complicated, real editorial issue stuck in the team subconscious and 2. an editor experiencing stress-diminished executive function.

To extricate yourself from an ESB, the best way to begin is by addressing these two causal factors in reverse order.

First: do what you can to draw stress and pressure out of the dynamic with your editor. DO NOT push more stress and pressure INTO that dynamic.

If you try to “solve” an ESB with complaints, scolding, demands, nags, threats, ultimatums, or accusations, it won’t work. In fact, it’ll probably make things much worse.

Doing that will likely leave your editor more frazzled, more inarticulate, more frantic, more triggered to do whatever maladaptive thing she does in the face of critical scrutiny. White-knuckling. Shutting down. Getting codependent. Quitting her job.

This is how ESBs go thermonuclear and result in canceled book deals. Which you might be okay with! But authors who are okay with canceling book deals for healthy boundary-related reasons generally don’t start down that road by trying to nag an editor into more acceptable behavior, you know? That’s a sign of someone who wants the deal not to fall apart.

Taking stress and pressure out of a dynamic does not mean “becoming passive in the face of dysfunction.”

That would just be a symmetric form of dysfunction.

Taking stress and pressure out of a dynamic means approaching other adults with respect, candor, faith, and deep, sincere grace—even when their behavior baffles and irritates you, even when it might go unrewarded, and even when they haven’t “earned it.”

“I think you’re brilliant and see you’re really stuck on these edits. I think this is a sign both of us ought to take seriously, even if neither one of us knows exactly what it’s about. (Do you? You can be candid with me, even if it’s unflattering!)

“How about we hit pause on the workflow we agreed on before and find a time to spend a couple of hours talking in person about our work so far and what feelings are coming up? No stupid ideas or forbidden topics — I just want to figure out what known unknown you and I are tripping over here, as I’m sure do you.”

Taking stress and pressure out of a dynamic means understanding the truth not of what’s really going on with your editor, but what’s going on with you.

Anxiety is an “emotion” like a stick insect is a stick. It’s unprocessed trauma in camouflage—nothing more.

People cling to anxiety when the prospect of being who they really are in the moment feels intolerably unsafe: feeling real feelings; having strong opinions; making big mistakes; soaring in self-love; learning from pain and struggle; letting broken things fall apart; grieving lost hopes; wallowing in mess.

If an ESB has you roiling in anxiety and acting rull neurotic, ask yourself: what part of your current reality might you be trying to ignore?

Second: whenever as much stress and pressure are removed from the dynamic as possible, figure out if there’s some practical change that needs to happen in order for you and your editor to bring that subconscious Thing to the surface and “fix” your book.

If it helps, I can tell you that the subconscious editorial Thing stressing your editor out is probably something to do with the intimacy of the book—how well it connects with and transforms the interior of a discrete target reader who is not you. Books that aren’t intimate in this way tend to be draining to read for reasons that are hard to articulate.

It’s possible that all you and your editor need is to relax and reset your expectations and workflow.

It’s also possible that her executive function is just too stressed out right now to have the executive capacity to surface her own genius—in which case, it might be time for her or you to hire a third-party editor to finish the job.

Third, and most important: LET GO OF THE NEED TO CONTROL OUTCOMES.

Other people are never going to behave exactly as you wish.

Nothing you ever create will ever be flawless.

You will be criticized in ways that hurt your feelings no matter how what you do and who you are.

There are going to be mistakes in your book. And typos. No matter how many people look it over and how many times you yourself reread it.

Every book and author gets criticism of some kind—often vicious and personal. Every single one. Especially if you happen to be a woman or marginalized person. Or if you curse. Boy, do Amazon reviewers hate the word “fuck.”

If you want to know how it feels to be an absolutely canonical, near-universally respected artist at the pinnacle of both talent and the hierarchies of patriarchal power, please read Donald Hall’s essays about what Robert Frost was like. Or any biographies of Picasso. Spoiler alert: none of them had anything resembling healthy self-confidence. They were as or more insecure than you. (I hope more, because they were really really insecure.)

There is no escaping pain and insecurity.

There is, however, some escaping from neuroticism. See also: convictions of one’s own helplessness. Those usually do not reflect reality.

You’re not actually stuck in any book deal. Or with your current agent or editor.

If you choose to back out of a formal contract, there will be consequences, sure. But these consequences will generally not include your life being ruined.

If we’re talking a book contract, for example, you’ll need to pay back the gross amount of money your publisher has paid you to date. Until you do, you won’t be clear to to publish the book with another company—and there’s a solid chance your erstwhile publisher would come after you in civil court for their money in a few years.

Civil court. Not criminal. And publishers are generally quite happy to work out reasonable payment plans — getting their money back, for example, from the first proceeds of your advance from a new publisher.

Book deals can be and usually are complicated, frustrating, messy, and flawed. So are books. So are people. But none of these words are synonyms for “impossible.” Or “unfathomable.” Or “inescapable.” Or “wrong.”

The fix for an ESB is accepting that perfect fixes don’t exist.

1. I’m going to refer to the non-author party in these dyads as the “editor” throughout, but remember please that I am referring here to anyone tasked with editing authors’ work in a professional capacity—not just in-house editors at publishing companies.