Close (to the Edit): The Salon on an invisible art
Gary Kamiya had an essay earlier this week on Salon entitled “Let us now praise editors,” in which he talks about the idea of editing in an Internet age. And while everyone has of course heard of editors — including the rare few who have themselves become literary stars, such as Maxwell Perkins and Gary Fisketjon — most people aren’t quite sure exactly what an editor does. As Kamiya writes, “It’s not an easy question to answer. Editors are craftsmen, ghosts, psychiatrists, bullies, sparring partners, experts, enablers, ignoramuses, translators, writers, goalies, friends, foremen, wimps, ditch diggers, mind readers, coaches, bomb throwers, muses and spittoons — sometimes all while working on the same piece.”
Having been through the editing process myself many times (including recently on Print is Dead), I can say that it’s almost never an enjoyable process but I’m always much better for it in the end. In that regard, it’s kind of like going to the dentist. You don’t want to go, but later you’re glad you did. Wait, no; that’s too passive. At the dentist you just sit there and endure the drill; good editing is more interactive than that (but sometimes not much more pleasurable). It’s more like going to boot camp, or to the gym with a stern personal trainer. Because a really good editor is barking at you to find the real story, to dig deeper, to try harder, to not repeat yourself and say something new. And it’s a tough thing to, when you think you’ve painted a masterpiece, go back and get out the brushes yet again.
In terms of the actual words, and how an editor touches and shapes them, years ago a writer I tremendously respect said to me some wise words about editing. Using the metaphor of pruning a tree, he said there were two kinds of editors: one that makes small trims around the entire tree, plucking off various leaves; while another kind of editor looks over the tree with a saw and just cuts off a entire branch here or there. I think that’s a great analogy, and I’ve thought of it often over the years.
But now that the Internet has arrived, with everyone living digital lives that are awash in online content, Kamiya and others see the art of editing as increasingly becoming a lost art: “The art of editing is running against the cultural tide. We are in an age of volume; editing is about refinement. It’s about getting deeper into a piece, its ideas, its structure, its language. It’s a handmade art, a craft. You don’t learn it overnight. Editing aims at making a piece more like a Stradivarius and less like a microchip. And as the media universe becomes larger and more filled with microchips, we need the violin makers.” And yet while I wouldn’t compare editors — for all that they do — to Stradivarius, I agree with Kamiya’s overall point.
In our digital age, editors will be needed more than ever. The instantaneous communication afforded by e-mail, texting and, well, instant messaging, means that most people lead — in a typographical way — unedited lives. Indeed, most text messages are a combination of stream of consciousness mixed with telegram-speak, where three-letter combinations stand in not only for words (LOL, WTF, OMG) but also emotions (why write a sentence when an emoticon can speak for you?). So not only do most people not edit their words, but they don’t even bother to type them out. And this Internet short-hand is now everywhere; it’s even become semi-acceptable in business e-mails to forgo punctuation and use large amounts of abbreviation. We can only imagine — with dread — how long it will be before the novelist’s trade is invaded with the language of LOLCats. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” will likely segue to something like IZ WRITING UR BUK.
Which is all to say that, in a digital future where a lot of tools are available to “prosumers” (look it up) that give them some of the powers once solely in the hands of publishers — the ability to reach a mass audience, print and design books — publishers and editors will still be needed. Perhaps now more than ever.
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I disagree quite vehemently. It’s the writer’s task, first and foremost, to self-edit - to cut and refine and rethink and refine again. That it may take years, even very many years, to learn this craft is not surprising.
True, a writer should turn in a complete draft, not a pile of scribbled-on cocktail napkins. But almost every writer benefits from a really good editor pushing them to make their book/article/essay better. Even a genius like Fitzgerald needed to be steered in the right direction from time to time. Updike is an example of someone who hasn’t been edited in years, and because of this a lot of his books over the past decade have been pretty half-baked.
Dear Jeff I was very intrigued to see you and Kamiya take on the subject of editing, and to frame the question specifically around what editing means in the Internet world. But I’m not sure either of you pushes the envelope as much as the opportunity permits, and I wonder if you might disabuse me maybe of some notions I’ve developed if you disagree with any of them. Among other things I’ve often thought editing is about a power relationship, or often is. Especially for the vast number of writers who are not John Updikes, the traditional editor is somewhat of an authority or police figure: a gate-keeper, a quality control specialist, a selector and legitimizer of editorial products and a bridge between medium and writer (often enforcing the medium’s editorial style). And I say “traditional” editor because I think that what the Internet is doing is not making editors irrelevant or more relevant than ever but redefining what they do. In my opinion the logic of the Internet is that people become their own editors in terms of gate-keeping, manning the sluice-gates of content flows into their heads. As you said we’re awash in content. People essentially are often bypassing editors. They are connecting with one another as writers and creators. In this world the type of editor who has the power to declare what is “good enough” to be read or seen and what is not, and to give that content a shape amenable to the style of a publication or medium is starting to feel like an anachronism, in my mind at least. As a species humans are sort of ornery and if given the chance appreciate the freedom to choose on their own, to give things what shape they want to give them. An editor then, becomes less gate keeper and more midwife (which may have been a traditional role too, but still I think there’s a qualitative leap). An editor becomes an expander of bandwidth, a creator of spaces in which creativity can flourish. His job becomes more architectural and less about power or refinement. He doesn’t lop off branches, there’s often no need to now, although of course exchange with a writer is always good. I think the good editor has always been selfless (which is why good editors usually aren’t famous), and in this new reality the selflessness is just incremented considerably. Also I would argue the distinction between editing and writing is increasingly blurry on the Internet (for example, isn’t bookmarking and blogging often a little of both?). I would love to read a novel written in the style of instant messaging or text messages; in Argentina where I live a novel came out recently titled something unrepeatable here (do small children read this blog?), but basically it was an off-color sexual proposition rendered in text messaging abbreviation-speak. I am very interested to know what you think about some of these issues. I wrote this very long message in a burst of enthusiasm, and I should have read more of your posts on editing before doing so, but there it is. I’ll read more of your blog on this issue over the next few days. Thank you (and sorry for my verbosity).
Marcelo,
Thanks for the long and thoughtful comment. You make some great points. In terms of the power position of an editor, and how that’s changing in an Internet world, I would say that that idea most resembles the idea of an agent, not quite an editor. In terms of trade publishing, it’s often the agent who wields more power than the editor, with authors feeling powerless unless they have one, and then feeling trapped by an agent who won’t send out their material because they feel it doesn’t fit the marketplace. I know lots of writers, who have agents who feel that if they could only communicate directly to a sympathetic editor, they could have a shot at selling their book. But of the course the whole system — up until now — has been about keeping power out of the hands of the individual; so writers HAD to go through agents. What’s happening in terms of the Internet is that Digg is becoming to new agent, choosing what material is important and popular. So I think that the diminishing power of agents is something that hasn’t yet been discussed.
–Jeff
Jeff, Thanks for the reply. I should clarify as I might have done in my post that since my background is in journalism I was mainly speaking by default with the journalism-type editor in mind (magazines, newspapers, etc.). I think the particularity of the publishing industry is that the editor is not really an enforcer in the same way he is in the journalism world. I guess the agent is. Your points about agents versus editor in the publishing world and how agents are the gatekeepers that writers come up against are enlightening for me, and of course there is overlap too with journalism editors. As you say Digg is helping everyone become writer/editors/agents; the cut and paste (clipping or sampling you might call it) logic of many blogs is doing the same. As for publishing I would only say that Lulu the self-publishing website which probably you’ve written about elsewhere is interesting for circumventing editors and agents, though I don’t know anything about publishing; still, perhaps the pendulum is swinging back in terms of self-publishing becoming respectable once more or at least not stigmatized or as marginal as it has been in rich northern countries since the advent of a mass literary market. For example in the history of literature it seems, many of the most interesting movements and individual authors have relied on self-publishing since perhaps one of the marks of truly revolutionary literature is that it is at least initially unrecognizable to the established institutions, marketplace, authorities …
But wait a minute…. how many books has Digg sold? Also sites like Digg are “democratic” not authoritarian, so basically you’re going to get the taste (and rule) of the mob, and we all know how that works…. We need individual authority, not GroupThink….
We need better editors, definitely. I thought more would come on the net and get involved, but it doesn’t look that way…. we all know that it’s the agents now who do all the editing…. Heck if your manuscript is not trendy enough then agents won’t represent you then you won’t see print. How to get around this?