Crazy Hats

(YOU'RE SO VAIN.  YOU PROBABLY THINK THIS POST IS ABOUT YOU...YOU'RE SO VAIN. I'LL BET YOU THINK THIS POST IS ABOUT YOU.  DON'T YOU?  DON'T YOU?   I CALL THIS PICTURE: CRAZED WRITER.)
 
DISCLAIMER: THIS POST MAY MAKE NO SENSE.  I BLAME SUBTLETEA'S STRAWBERRY GREEN CRACK TEA. EITHER WAY, IT'S RANT TIME!

I’ve spent the weekend parked in my favorite tea shop, in fact the only tea shop I know of in the city, wearing two hats: a writer’s, and an editor’s.  In this technologically advanced age we live in, switching between the two doesn’t take bobby pins or adjustable plastic snaps; it’s as simple as closing one browser window and opening another.  Then why does each hat feel as burdensome as a sombrero in the middle of a crowded subway car?  Probably because when I switch between the two I feel increasingly bi-polar, and sense my own hypocrisy bubbling to the surface. 

Whenever I open a GoogleDoc (a fancy way of sharing documents with a group of people, allowing for multiple, interactive editors for a piece) and look at the choices gracing the top of the window, I am amazed at the power a delete button has. It is one of many tools used to thwack through the overgrown shrubbery as gallantly as a Prince getting to the maiden in the tower.  In a matter of seconds I am able to reformat a paragraph or condense a wordy sentence, as I aim to make each piece stronger than when I first encountered it.  After all, that’s my job as an editor: to catch errors that whizzed past the writer, tighten the piece, and clarify any factual or structural errors that jump out at me. 

The problem is many of these corrections aren’t outlined in grammatical guidebooks…they’re subjective.  What may be a wordy sentence to me is a labor of love to the writer.  At a certain point, I can’t coddle the writers I’m working with, and by the power vested in me, I must make decisions without running each adjective choice by them.  Technology makes engaging in a dialogue about these changes an easy, interactive process; easy to engage in arguments about said choices, that is. 

I should know.  When I put on my writer hat, I’m on the other end of the spectrum, emailing my editor pleading my case for the reasoning behind a certain lead-in, or a missing exclamation point.  I've even cursed them behind their back before!  Blasphemy!  Because of the nature of my writing work—some articles are aimed at 14-year-old girls, other papers are for 30-year-old gay men—I have the joy of not only switching between two hats, but instead having different ones for each type of assignment I have as a writer.  Sometimes I even wear a tiara. 

While it’s ideal for a piece of writing to be as all encompassing as possible, the audience has to always be taken into account, assignment to assignment.  This idea is much easier for me to grasp as an editor.  When wearing my writing hat—or powdered wig, or piñata—I sometimes feel as if my work is being raped by the delete button.  How could my editor diminish my work, so?  I wonder.  Yet I am freewheeling with the same button when I’m the editor.

In my short experience in this profession, where it has been about as “learn as you go” as one can get, I’ve come to appreciate good editors more and more with each passing day.  Sometimes I feel like my vocabulary as an editor dwindles, leaving my reasoning when changing a particular sentence of another writer to: “This is bad.”  The best editors I have worked with have gentle ways of suggesting alterations and tightening the piece with enough subtlety that it maintains my voice; after going through their brain, it’s just crystal clear, rather than the filled with the occasional mumbled sentence.

Because of online editing programs and trading drafts by email, the communication becomes clouded in a profession that is all about communicating words to an audience.  What could be an innocent change on the editor’s part may be seen as a personal attack from the writer’s viewpoint. 

I think becoming a good editor involves gaining absolute trust and respect of the writer, in as little time as possible, something I haven’t mastered yet.  It can’t be a power trip for either side.  Maybe I just need to sit the writer (or editor, depending on who I am...confused yet?) in a room with me, put them in an equally ludicrous hat so we can just laugh at each other; you know, leveling the ground. 

Comments

[Esther]

Nice photo! I've been a writer and an editor and I think that the latter definitely helps the former. Some of the most difficult writing I've done has been when I didn't have easy access to an editor and I really missed that one-on-one give-and-take. I think having a good editor definitely made me a better writer.

[M]

Hey Esther!

I totally agree with you. I've noticed my editing work has helped my own writing immensely. Obviously I still have very far to go (that makes it sounds like you can stop learning about writing...which I know isn't true), but learning how to fix problems in others' writing--which are always easier to spot than in your own--has helped me spot them in mine.

And I second the idea that having a good editor can make one a better writer. My first editor at Dance Spirit, who has since become a dear friend of mine, was a gentle guide that didn't just edit my work, but helped me understand why those edits made the piece stronger.

[Larry]

What may be a wordy sentence to me is a labor of love to the writer.

An inexperienced or unskillful editor may assume that reducing the number of words in a sentence is always the option of choice, not realizing that cutting words may deprive the sentence of cadence, emphasis, wit, focus, or any number of other virtues that may have made the original sentence stronger. It's a kind of "gotcha game" where if the editor sees something that can be cut, he or she assumes it should be.

I could easily have cut 30 words from the above paragraph, but instead I chose to expand it. Sometimes more is more.

[Larry]

If I may comment on your otherwise very enjoyable article:

Whenever I open a GoogleDoc (a fancy way of sharing documents with a group of people, allowing for multiple, interactive editors for a piece) and look at the choices gracing the top of the window, arming me with a collection of tools to thwack through the overgrown shrubbery as gallantly as a Prince getting to the maiden in the tower, I am amazed at the power a delete button has.

-- Seems overloaded. I would split this into two sentences.

I have the joy of not only switching between two hats, but instead having different ones for each type of assignment I have as a writer; sometimes I even wear a tiara.

-- I would make the last clause its own sentence. Sounds wittier that way.

When wearing my writing hat—or powdered wig, or piñata

-- Maybe you're overworking the metaphor by now. Or perhaps you need to look up the word "piñata."

Sorry, couldn't help myself. I'm a born editor.

[M]

A few things Larry:

1. Have no doubt, I understand I'm an inexperienced editor.

2. It's very true that sometimes more is more. The book I'm reading right now, "How To Read Like a Writer," has some wonderful examples of that very fact.

3. I guarantee you would vomit on the keyboard if you read some of the paragraphs I am referring to. Would you like me to send you examples? ;)

[Larry]

Would you like me to send you examples? ;)

Sure, just give me a few minutes to vomit-proof the keyboard.

[M]

Haha. I agree with all of your changes, Larry. Although I have to say that I enjoy the idea of placing a pinata on my head.

And you can vomit proof a keyboard?! Damn, I could have used that info earlier today.

Consider it done. Except for the pinata business...I'm still into that one.

[Larry]

And you can vomit proof a keyboard?!

I'm submitted a patent for it. I could make a mint.

[Larry]

And you can vomit proof a keyboard?!

I've submitted a patent for it. I could make a fortune.

[Larry]

Two posts when I needed only one - that was wordy.