Self-Editing While Editing

At work, while I'm doing my part-time gig as "book order guy," I spend a lot of time listening to what's going on around me. We all work in cubicles in a great big loft space, and although there are some conversations you just don't want to listen to -- or even hear -- there are also a lot of things that I've learned while listening to the people who have been there longer than I have.

This is how I've learned the standard ways of dealing with authors, how I've figured out how much of the day is work-related and how much is fluff, and exactly what the sales folks say to get some people to sign up. And... well... the final of those three has given me some of the most "interesting" information.

Which brings us to "Self-Editing Point Number One": Ignoring the ignorance in the office.

Let's just say that the main person in sales right now kind of sounds like a pushy used car salesman when he's on the phone. The guy spends a lot of time giving out great information, but I've talked to other people in the office about how wild it is to hear how he describes some of what goes on. When he is selling editing packages, he actually says that we employ "real professional editors, not just some out-of-work English teachers or anything."

Hmm... So... I've got my nice MA in English, focusing on Composition and Rhetoric, and I taught Freshman Comp for 4 years (okay... 2 in Grad school, and 2 part-time after that). That means that I've actually been trained not only in how to edit and proofread, but also how to contructively critique manuscripts. I'm not sure what credentials the rest of his "non-former-teacher professional editors" have (and I know some of them are really really good) but I bet that I -- a formerly out-of-work former English teacher -- have got more relative experience than most of them do.

But, before I rant, there's also "Self-Editing Point Number Two": Critiquing a manuscript, without critiquing the author.

I made it to the end of the first round of one of my editing assignments, today. It was a fairly interesting read -- basically a memoir of a man's journey from college to a police force, to the war in Iraq, and back to civilian life. He's got some really good stories which are mired in jargon (which is not surprising, since the jobs he's been in have had pretty specific ways of talking about the world). But he also spends a few chapters basically ranting about the way he perceives the current state of American politics.

Consequently, I spent a lot of time this week inserting comments into his manuscript, asking for clarification of military and law enforcement terminologies. And I also spent a decent amount of time biting my digital tongue and not commenting on the political rants. Don't get me wrong -- I still critiqued those sections, but mainly to ask questions, such as "Could you explain why you feel this way?" or, in reference to comments like "THEY WERE INSANE!" asking questions like "Who were insane?" But, overall, I kept the critique constructive and completely removed my personal politics from it.

You know, I think that's probably where my time in Grad School -- as well as my time being one of those teachers that I keep hearing aren't good editors -- really comes in handy. After all, when you're working with college freshman, the last thing you want to do is frustrate them and force them to stop writing. You want to encourage them to write, and you want to coach them to write well. Which, hopefully, is what I have done with the manuscript I've been editing this week.

Of course, you'll all be able to find out how well I did in a few months when the book comes out. Not that I'd suggest you buy it, but you could... (Don't worry. Comments like that are pretty normal in my office. But I may need to bite my tongue pretty hard when I have my "editorial phonecall" with the author later this month.)

(And we won't even go into how much self-editing I've done while writing this posting.)