Editing

Last month I was given a fantastic opportunity: a retired Disney artist I'm acquainted with asked me to edit his memoirs. Now, I've never really done any serious editing work for anyone other than myself before; I've read things for friends, but I've never gone through and done a sort of line-by-line thing for someone else, certainly not for someone who's not a friend. I was incredibly flattered, and of course I said yes. I have the chance to get some real editing experience and to read all this behind-the-scenes sort of stuff about some of my favourite movies from childhood. It's great, and it's also been quite a learning experience.

For starters, this is a lot harder than I thought going into it. I thought I'd be through it in a couple days, but it's been about a month now and I still have about 1/4 of the book to go. It's not just reading. It's not even reading and pausing occasionally to say I did/did not like something. It's like making a cross-country road trip in rush-hour traffic. Going going going picking up speed aaaaand stop, comma here. Take out this semi-colon. Going going going going picking up speed aaaaand combine these two sentences, incorrect use of the apostrophe. Going go-- stop, that's not what "literal" means. It's really quite labour intensive. Maybe it's been too long since I've seriously edited any of my own work, but the speed has seriously surprised me. Granted, it doesn't help that I'm working at my regular job between 45 and about 60 hours a week, usually six days a week, but still.

The toughest lesson I've had to learn though is the issue of voice. When I first started, I wanted to rewrite everything. I'd look at something and just be like, "This is wrong, that's not how I'd say it at all. It SHOULD be like THIS." But then I'd stop, take a step back, and struggle to find a less-invasive approach. No, it's not how I'd say it, but that doesn't matter. You know why? Because this isn't my book. I'm helping with it, I'm putting a lot of work into it, but I'm not the writer, I am the editor. My job is not to change the book to my voice, it's to help my writer improve his voice. It can be tough, to the point where sometimes I think I'm about to start bleeding from biting my tongue so hard, but it's worth it. I'm learning how to make less-intrusive edits, how to tell if something really needs to be changed, and how to support my writer as opposed to doing things for my writer/trying to replace my writer.

It has been quite the interesting experience so far, and as I said, there's still a chunk to go. I'm really glad I've had this opportunity, and I think (hope) it will really help me to have a better understanding of things in my Editorial Management module this fall.