Re: I remembered to log in.
You are working under a few assumptions that are not necessarily correct.

One is that the publisher's editor actually has any time. Publishing, especially in Australia, is riding on its arsebones. Editors are overworked and underpaid so basically your ms has to be just about ready to hit the printing press when it hits the publisher.

Editors hate being harrassed by authors and authors hate upsetting editors and both these conditions are astoundingly easy for an unsuspecting author to stumble into... it doesn't make for smooth negotiations - and I do recommend you "discuss" the contract. So the less at that stage, the better, IMHO.

Number Two assumption is that a professional editor is a writer who couldn't make it as a writer and just hung up a sign saying "Editor". Too often this is the case but mine is better than most in-house editors. She freelances for a variety of companies and major publishing houses and she has insights into the marketplace, other people's minds and an astounding ability with words that far exceed my own abilities. She knows how to make a good story into a great one. And I don't know about you... but I rarely think of myself and the word "great" in the same sentence. She tells me in which direction to push the envelope.

Now, I know you think that I'm a good editor. But I can't see the faults in my own work, and they'll be really basic ones like the voice being inconsistent, or whiney. Generalist impressions really, and if I post it at a crit group, I get 10 generalist impressions back for the mere price of a few crits and I can iron out the kinks. Kinks I didn't even know were there before because I'm too wrapped up in my own story... I practically don't need to read the words in my own story, I know the mood, I know the character, but I can't guess if anyone else is getting that too. A crit group is the cheapest form of feedback and will save you money with a professional editor or face if you skip straight to the publisher's editor. There are significant problems with crit groups, and the mutilation of enthusiasm is the main one. And one I haven't protected myself from adequately... altho, I have been thru the Hiroshima of critique groups so it's hard not to be mutilated in some way. Another is that you'll meet someone who tries to rewrite your prose into formal American textbookism prose and you'll sit there going, huh? Strewth, mate! What a load of bollocks! What's wrong with me bloody prose?

I'm actually a member of three crit groups, a children's one - a very talented and multi-published online group altho we meet regularly at book launches etc, Otherworlds - that sff one you and many other people dislike for it's general harshness, but I still put to good use, and SuperNOVA - a sffh group that meet face to face once a month, possibly the best and most talented group downunder (let's see if Thorbies bites). SuperNOVA is a top group for imaginative direction too. If I'm stalling, couch potatoing, wimping out plotwise, they'll kick my plot right up the wazoo and send it out to do some real work.

So I guess I'm saying imput is important, generally, but quality imput is the thing that is going to really help. I'm lucky to know so many excellent writers willing to share their expertise.

Having said all that about imput and crit groups tho, it is hard to protect your enthusiasm when you truly know how much you don't know and some crit groups aren't going to teach you a thing. They will just have you running around full of faults with no answers about how to improve.

There is something beautiful about the teenage* years of writing, of being 10ft high and bulletproof and churning out pages. If there is a way to keep that while attaining the knowledge to mould that writing into something that resonates with readers everywhere, then that is the path to take. I suspect it may not involve crit groups.


*Teenage as in innocent enough to think you still know it all and anything can happen.