A high school senior recently reviewed my edits to his college essay and called me a genius.
I don’t care that he’s 17, it made my little heart swell. But it wasn’t just my ego’s heart, it was my compassionate heart as well. The mother (a colleague) reported that both she and her son felt their stress go down, and the son’s confidence was bolstered. Hearing that my small edits and rearranging of sentences could have such a massive impact made me feel so wonderful.
The kid is a good writer. I was careful not to put words of mine on the page but rather work exclusively with his words or give him suggestions to find better or more words in certain spaces. Most of what I did was literally move sentences around and create different paragraph indentions. It was mostly a structural edit (and of course I suggested he delete a bunch of words because I like minimalist final drafts). That might be the most confidence boosting type of edit I can provide: your words are great and I moved them around. Like putting a group of people in a different formation for a picture: they all look great, they just were hidden in their previous poses.
A while ago I got an email from the chaplain client I had. I worked with her to edit her chaplain certification papers, which was a huge task with epic consequences. If her papers were not sufficient, she would have to go through the long process again. Here’s what she wrote in her email:
Writing to let you know that I had my chaplain board certification interview today and am now board certified! I got feedback from the committee about the thoroughness and clarity of my writing, I couldn’t have done it without you. I appreciate your expertise and work!
THE THOROUGHNESS AND CLARITY OF MY WRITING! That was definitely my ego boost for the year. However, once again, the compassionate heart boost was that this woman, who I could tell from her writing was a wonderful chaplain, got to achieve her dreams! Her case was similar to the 17 year old’s: they had the words, they just needed some clarity and moving around.
Often I find that these “big-deal” papers (essays for college, resumes, certification papers) pull out all our insecurities and make our brains mushy and convoluted. My favorite thing to do as an editor is to provide clarity in the high-pressure mush. I love to simplify a document, down to the good stuff. You don’t need extra words or fancy language. You need to clearly answer the questions asked, and do it with YOUR words, YOUR personality, YOUR humanity. That wins every time. And it feels so good to edit that way, because basically I’m taking someone’s work and giving it back to them with all the best parts shined up and in the spotlight. They see that they aren’t so bad after all, in fact, they’re kind of brilliant.
I suppose I write all this to pat myself on the back, but really I also am processing why I love editing so much. It’s my own art-form. I love taking the words of others and finding the gems and potential. It gives me great pleasure – treasure hunting and puzzling with words. But I also love the lights that go off when all of a sudden, a person sees their own words and says “oh- that IS what I meant to say!” It was there all along, I just chisel away til I get there. They feel confident and ready to go get that job, college, certification, whatever it is.
I’ve been thrilled to be able to copy-edit in my current job. It’s not my main responsibility, but it’s one that gives me so much joy I can’t even hardly wait before my colleagues must write another dreaded “Memo.” I can’t wait to get my hands on it- put the commas in the right place, capitalize the right words, simplify (as much as they’ll allow me) that garbly government wording, and be the authority on whether we should italicize something or not. Some of these edits are by rule (Oxford comma all the way), and some are style choices. Those style choices are fun for me. I get to make a choice and then enforce it like a rule on the rest of the written document. I bring order and precise-ness in a way that helps my colleagues not waste their time on countless edits, but also shows just how crazy smart they are. Again- even this type of copyediting feels like art to me. I carve, whittle, shape, and shift until a document worthy of the title “Professional Memo” appears. It’s so stinking satisfying.
Editing. It is an art. And now I understand why all the writers of books thank their editors pretty early in the acknowledgment pages, saying something like “without you, my words would be lying in a ditch somewhere…”
