That Editing Thing
That Editing Thing
By Tom Howe
There is no great writing, only great rewriting.
~ Justice Brandeis
I’ve been a writer for many years, since I’m so old and everything, so have spent many and many an hour editing. A lot more hours editing than writing, actually, so it’s well into the thousands of hours by now. I had become as good at it as any non-objective person could be, I thought. Not that I figured I could make something of mine perfect at all. But I did think I had mastered most of the tricks of the trade, at least, and knew my own mind well enough to realize it when I felt something needed to be changed from the original words.
I was wrong, again. Learnage ho.
You see there’s this thing, this feeling. It’s very subtle, at least in me, and hardly even there at all, unless you know to look for it. It’s the kind of thing you only learn after countless similar experiences, because you can’t even see it unless you’ve been looking in that direction so long you are almost blind and have to use your ears to see.
It’s a way to tell when something is wrong.
One will be reading along and everything is looking just dandy. Chances are you’ve read this section more than twice already, and liked it the other times. Then slowly/suddenly, almost imperceptibly, something nags at you, if the faintest of whispers is a nag. Not a nag at all, come to think of it, that’s way too strong a word. - What was that? Why am I suddenly kind of unfocused, reading along and not paying very close attention?
Oh well, guess I’m just a space cadet. I’ll just keep - but then again, what was that? Was there anything really there?
And so you go back to the part you just somehow hazed over a teensy bit. And then, lo and behold, there is an obvious typo or something much more subtle that really is not right, if you look at it closely for pete’s sake. It was there but you always blew right by it, because you missed that still small voice, not realizing your inattention was telling you something.
That’s the key. It is not something that makes you pay closer attention and go aha! It’s the thing that makes you pass over your words mindlessly. When you do that, it’s a warning signal. Something bad is pushing you (or your conscious mind) away. Go back and check.
And sometimes the unexpected edit is even beautiful, or better than that, funny.
“We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”
~ Henry James
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