Writer's Block

Cold as ice

It's a fact of life: writers complain about editors, and editors complain about writers. So now that I've been moonlighting on the other side of the desk, do I officially hate myself?

In addition to filling in occasionally as the night city editor at The Maui News, a job which mainly seems to involve proofing copy, listening to the police scanner and drinking microwaved coffee, I took a freelance gig for a local publisher editing a nonfiction book.

What have I learned? Editing is a lot harder than I thought, and I'm not particularly good at it. There's a difference between being able to revise your own work and being able to edit someone else's. For one thing, while I can look at a paragraph and just know that there's something not quite right about it, and see how it needs to be fixed, I don't really have the vocabulary to explain what I think the problem is. For another, I learned that as much as my heart breaks when an editor plays with my carefully crafted words, when it's my turn to mess with somebody else's, I'm just too cold. I'll even admit to feeling a bit gleeful as I delete a rambling, self-indulgent passage. Maybe it's a sense of payback for all the times I've been on the other end of the ax. Whatever. It's one thing to cut and polish somebody else's work. Doing it without making them hate you? That's an art.

One phenomenon I've noticed is that people who are not professional writers often have a much harder time accepting editing. They need more improvement, but are almost always more attached to their words, and get indignant when you try to change them. You just can't be a working writer and avoid having your words edited, so I suppose you have to get used to it or go crazy.

I've had good and bad experiences with editors. One time I did a story for a Honolulu-based magazine, and didn't learn until I picked up the issue on the newsstand that the editor had completely rewritten the first third of my piece, significantly changing the meaning of the whole story. That's just not cool. I was embarrassed that I'd told all my friends to read the piece, and would have wanted the chance to take a stab at the changes myself.

Another time, I wrote a 1,200 word for a different Honolulu magazine, and the editor came back to me and asked me to rewrite it from a different angle and with a different style. The whole thing. I was taken aback, but the final story was so much better, and ended up influencing the way I approached all my stories. I'll always be grateful to that editor for helping me become a better writer.

Love 'em or hate 'em, we can't escape our editors. As for me, I'm happy to stay on the writing side of the desk.