Bookplanet: what the editor thinks

Inside the editor's brain – by SARAH HAMPSON

'I do not subscribe to the belief that editors are, by definition, ego-less, unthanked, and all that stuff. I actually get annoyed when I hear that. By and large, [as an editor] you are bringing your own ego, your own mind, your own responses, your own creativity. That's part of the editorial process."

Ellen Seligman is speaking.

So, expect one thing: Whatever she says will soon be supplemented with an afterthought, perhaps a clarification, a substitute for a word she used, an example of an exception to what she just said, and likely a sidebar of tangential thought.

When she talks, two brains are at work.

There's her First Response Brain, the one that listens to questions and offers an immediate answer. And then there's her Editor's Brain, the one that considers how the first brain responded and then scrawls in some marginalia.

Seligman has the title of publisher of fiction and vice-president of McClelland & Stewart, the Canadian publishing house that celebrates its centenary this year, but she is best known (and most often referred to) as the top fiction editor in the country. Architect of the fiction and poetry program at M&S (and creator of Emblem Editions, a paperback series of fiction by award-winning and best-selling writers), she has had a hand in editing many works that have become deeply embedded in the Canadian consciousness.

In early June, for the second time in her career that spans almost 30 years with M&S, she won the Canadian Book Association Libris Award for editor of the year. Having worked with some of Canada's most iconic authors -- Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry, Jane Urquhart and Leonard Cohen, among others -- Seligman understands fiction from the inside out and is an authority on the mystery of the creative process and the need ("almost an affliction" she calls it) that "real writers" have to write.

So would she say that a good fiction editor needs to have an imagination?

She pauses for a moment. "Theoretically, it is not about my imagination," she begins. "It's about my response to their imagination. What I am is the ideal reader, not the ideal imaginer."

Fine, but would she acknowledge that an editor has to have an imagination?

"Good question," she says solemnly. She shifts in her seat at the boardroom table of M&S's downtown Toronto offices, and gives another careful explanation. "I think a good editor has to be able to understand the imaginative sphere," she allows. "I will say that. But I don't know if that makes me imaginative." Her smile is almost apologetic.

"Sorry," she says. "I'm being very precise."

Precision is the perfect word to describe Seligman, from her speech to her professional skill to the neatness of her small waist and the fitted tailoring of her silk jacket over pants and sensible shoes.

Asked about her husband, James Polk, a former literary editor and publisher, novelist and pianist who has been involved in culture and the arts at the provincial government level for many years, she remains silent for a beat. "He is not my husband," she corrects me. "He is my partner." (Later, she phones me to say that I can use the word "husband" if I want. "I don't care," she says. "It's just that I thought if you wanted to use the correct term.") But it's not just Seligman's respect for exactitude that governs her manner. She is at that fiftysomething age of certainty, when a woman edits out all the things she knows she is not or doesn't like or doesn't want to be bothered with. "I don't smile," she had announced to The Globe photographer when asked to pose for a portrait. "It never works," she stated flatly, her handsome face set in a stern expression.

Still, Seligman is willing to be expansive about what she has learned in her work -- if the right question is posed, that is.

"I don't see it that way at all," she states, throwing me an icy gaze, when asked if editing the fiction of famous authors has given her insight into the creative process. "I don't think working with people who are well known as opposed to new authors gives me any more insight into the creative process. I think each writer gives me insight into how they work, and over the years, I've learned a huge amount from each and every book that I've worked on, and that has made me a better editor."

And what has she learned?

She nods her head approvingly to this question. "I don't know how to say specifically," she says with some hesitation. "Each writer is different." But then she loosens up a bit and allows herself a long passage of thought. "You read a book, and maybe one can say what maybe needs work or what could use revision here and there. So, a reader might be able to do that. But if you're really going to be useful, I think an editor has to understand what is possible to do. So you learn to develop the idea that 'Okay, this is this book' and you learn to make a distinction between what changes would make it another book as opposed to what can be done with the rough parameters of what the author wants to do with this book.

"I've learned that over time, and not from any specific author," she says, carefully qualifying her observation.

"The structure is as important as a comma," she adds upon further reflection. "I sort of have this way -- and I don't know if it's a curse or a blessing, although obviously professionally it's a blessing -- but when I'm reading and editing really closely, I sort of feel as if I'm looking at something this way, this way, and this way," she says, pointing her two index fingers in all directions to indicate the three-dimensions of an imagined universe. Her one moment of exuberance causes her to laugh. "That may sound a bit excessive," she adds sheepishly.

Over the years, Seligman has had "seductive" opportunities to work elsewhere, but she feels committed to M&S, having survived its ups and downs, from the early days with the company's passionate founder, the late Jack McClelland, to its rescue from bankruptcy by Avie Bennett in 1986 and the sale of 75 per cent of its ownership to the University of Toronto in 2000. (Random House owns the other 25 per cent.) "I came to Canada and I was infected by the challenge of how we were an independent company," says Seligman, an American who grew up in Manhattan and studied English literature and history at the University of Wisconsin. "I've been here to see a lot of change."

The "huge burgeoning" of Canadian literature has been the most exciting development, she says. In the nineties, the international success of several Canadian books, including Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning The English Patient , Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces , and Anne-Marie MacDonald's Fall on your Knees , gave impetus to new writers, she believes. Plus, "Canadian readers have come of age," Seligman says. "There's a level of sophistication."

Has her work enriched her life? Her response is immediate. "It has hugely enriched my life," she parrots back to me. "It's about art, and I think that working with people who are open and not necessarily bogged down with the practical world at all times of day retain a certain freshness and sometimes a lack of cynicism."

She allows herself a broad smile. Oh, and one more thought. "There's a real aliveness to writers that I respond to."

In her own words

On editing famous Canadian authors: "I think any new editor would be nervous, and I was. But at the end of the day, when I was working on the text, I just worked on the text, and I wasn't inhibited by knowing who the author was."

On the breadth of Canadian fiction: "Now there are writers from all over the world who are Canadian. They're bringing a new out-of-Canada perspective, and that is something very different."

On how far Canadian literature has come: "Don't forget that Michael Ondaatje was once considered an experimental writer. I remember fighting with the sales department to sign [his first novel] In the Skin of a Lion . They were trepidacious. But it was a huge success. Suddenly, the world grew up." -- S.H.