It's an Edit, Not an Audit

I imagine for some people being edited feels like a kind of assault, one’s deepest failings and frailties laid bare for the judgment of others. I know that I have edited authors who are awaiting my response to their work like a defendant awaiting a verdict. I suspect to many authors, a query in the margin can come across as an accusation: Why did you choose THIS word and not THAT? Why did you phrase it this way and not that? What is WRONG WITH YOU???

This feeling of the edit as a judgment can work in the opposite direction, too, as many writers look forward to the euphoria of vindication, of having their worth or their talent verified by an expert, self-esteem padded and pampered by gushing praise.

But an edit is not an audit. It is not the time either for condemnation or vindication, however powerful the psychology of the moment might be. I want to suggest that an edit is better thought of not as a moment of judgment, but as a process of collaborative refinement. 

​To be sure, I am a writer myself, and it is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to avoid anticipatory feelings as someone else takes a close lens to my work. It is only natural to have those feelings. But I do want to suggest that those feelings are not the purpose and target of the edit, and that we should do our best to set them to the side.
 
I am describing here primarily the developmental and line-edit (see my blog post here for further discussion of the difference). For copyediting, frankly, there really should not be any anxiety at all. A copyedit is intended to align your manuscript with a publisher’s style guide. It is, for the most part, a mechanical exercise in which personal preferences, personality, and psychology should play little role.
 
But it is, I admit, different at the developmental and line-edit stage. Here a writer’s vision, his or her intentions, in some cases the deeply personal stories they may be sharing and their ideas about how best to share them, our understanding of ourselves and our world, our talent, are all at issue. It would be unusual not to be personally invested in an edit when all that and more is at stake.
 
But personal and psychological reactions will inevitably produce defensiveness, and this is not what we want at this crucial stage. It is important to remember that the object of an edit is not personal, and it is not to elicit a judgment about a writer’s worth, or talent, or value.
 
The process seems a lot like psychotherapy. Psychological analysis can be a very difficult process to get through. There is no text in which we are more deeply invested than the Self. A good therapist never hides from the truth, even when it is unpleasant to hear. Likewise, a good editor will stay focused on the text. While I want to have a good, personal relationship with all my authors—this is, after all, a deeply collaborative enterprise, and rewarding as such—at the end of the day, my focus is improving the text, just like the therapist’s goal is helping a client be the best version of him or herself they can be, however difficult any given session might be.
 
The focus is, and must remain, on the text. My job as an editor is to address the text, ascertain its strengths and weaknesses, and propose strategies for elevating the former and limiting the latter. It is a necessary function because a writer is often too close to the material, too invested in it, to see it as objectively as possible. Those feelings associated with judgment are one measure and expression of that proximity.
 
And perhaps that is why a good editor can seem so threatening. Writers always ask themselves “Ack, why didn’t I see this? How could I have let that omission slip?” But that is the point: It is very difficult for any of us to have that kind of insight. An editor is more likely to be able to see the matter clearly precisely because he or she is not so directly invested, on a personal level.
 
Moreover, as an editor, I see myself as a counter-puncher. I am only responding to what I see on the page, including any omissions or lacunae that persist. But I only have that insight BECAUSE OF WHAT IS ALREADY THERE. Even when I propose a new phrase or a new passage, I am not inventing so much as responding. As such, think of your editor as your prototypical reader: the response that the text provokes in me is likely similar to the response it provokes in others.
 
As a counter-puncher, I can also see that the solution to whatever ails a particular narrative is also usually, almost always, already present. The text will offer the solution, if we just step back and let it talk to us a little bit. This is what the editor does.
 
My developmental and line edits are not judgments. They are possibilities to consider. They are part of your text because they are a reaction, and nothing more than that, to your text. Those suggestions are, as it were, always there, embedded in the text that you have already produced. All that remains is to accept them or not. (And rejecting them is good, because it means the writer--you!--HAVE considered, and have chosen to retain the original prose. It is all the more considered in that way.) But either way, what remains is still very much your text, and nothing more than your text.
 
There is reason to fear the reaper, perhaps, and maybe even your therapist, but not your friendly neighborhood editor.
 
—David J. Snyder