With Jesse Steele

If you're a surgeon and planning to write something, Betsy White should be your best friend.  Thankfully for the rest of us who lack a degree from medical school and have fingers better suited for a keyboard than precision surgery, Betsy also works in a wide variety of non-medical genres.  Betsy worked with McGraw Hill, East Carolina University School of Medicine and Recovery Communications (among others), but we're proud to have her as part of the Editorial Department staff.

JS: You've done a lot of work with medical texts. How did that happen? Do you have a background in medicine, or is it something you just came across?

BW: My husband is a physician, and when we got married he began an internship at Stanford University Hospital, and I went along. I took a temp job typing, then applied for an opening as a secretary in the Radiation Therapy department. I may have gotten the job on my Southern accent and youthful looks, although I had a good liberal-arts degree. When we moved to Virginia McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology hired me as a copyeditor, and from there I became a freelance editor for various clients including some university presses.

JS: Do you think being a Southerner influences your preferences in literature? Do you tend toward Southern writers?

BW: I like many Southern writers a lot-especially with an Appalachian slant. Ron Rash's first novel, which I just finished, was a joy to read. Since I've lived all over and traveled a fair amount abroad, my literary tastes aren't provincial. For one thing, I'm a considerable Anglophile. We've traveled a lot in England, and I often choose English writers. Belatedly, I've just discovered the splendid novels of Charles McCarry, and he's neither Southern nor English.

My answer probably reminds you that Southerners don't just answer your questions, we tell you stories. That's because the South was so poor after the War Between the States that story-telling was about the only entertainment left, and it's still a widely appreciated art. I'm afraid lots of us personify a figure of speech I heard and liked: "That talk had more anecdotes than a middle-aged author."

JS: I'm asking everyone this question. What was the book you remember catching your attention, your first literary love?

BW: My father worked for the Kingsport Press, then the largest book manufacturing plant in the world. It produced lots of schoolbooks, and he brought home damaged ones for me-early readers, at first. My earliest memories are of being read to on his lap, so that long before school I was able to read. My mother was always yelling at me: "Put that book away and come help me dust, or help with the dishes," and so on. A friend of hers had lost her only child but still had a set of his books called "My Book House" in a shelf on her stair landing, and when my mother and I went to visit her, while the ladies chatted I would sit on the landing and delve into those books. A few years ago when I ran into a dealer at a book fair with a set of them for sale, it was like meeting an old friend, and I would have loved to be able to buy them.

JS: You've been with TED the longest of anyone except Renni and Ross, I think. How did you come to be working with us?

BW: When Renni and I were teenagers we both went to Camp Sky Valley, near Hendersonville, North Carolina. Then we went off to separate colleges and lost touch until 15 years or so ago when a friend gave me a New York Times article about author's editors. "You could do this," he told me. So I looked up "author's editors" online and found Renni, called her, and we talked and talked and talked. Soon after, my husband and I went to a high school reunion near Renni's home, and when we stopped to visit her, she asked if I'd like to work for her company. Of course I said yes! Since coming on board I've enjoyed work on fiction as well as continuing to edit nonfiction, collaborating on a TV personality's memoir, even some ghost-writing. I've also learned more than I can possibly say. Renni is far and away the best editor I've ever known.

JS: Do you think having been happily married for 51 years gives you a different perspective on some of the love story elements we read in manuscripts here at TED?

BW: That's an interesting question. I maintain a romantic ideal about love stories, maybe because I'm still lucky enough to be living one. I relish stories about interesting people and their relationships, both the happy ones and the conflicted ones. Growing up as we did before the so-called "sexual revolution," most women of my generation viewed stable marriage as the norm. Our society isn't like that any more, though, and I can roll pretty well with whatever contemporary authors dish out. I don't enjoy reading so-called romance novels, but I do love to read stories that have a happy, romantic ending. Isn't true love what we all want most of all?

Probably the greatest impact my marriage and family life has had on me is through our children, now all adults. Two of our three are recovering addicts and alcoholics, and the third was born with imperfect kidneys and is now on dialysis hoping for a transplant. Those challenges motivated me to write books I hoped would help other people, and led to editing books of the same sort. I grew up believing that if you were a good girl and followed the rules everything would be happily ever after. That's just not the way it is. I don't know how I could ever have lived through such grave challenges without a strong partner. We've grown stronger and drawn closer through these struggles, so that what was once a giddy barely-out-of- the-teens love is now a deep and unshakable bond.

For more information about Betsy White, visit her bio page, where you can learn more about her preferred genres and read testimonials regarding her work.  If you're interested in working with her on your project, contact us via our editor availability page.