Editor

Oh, the dreaded editing process. The writer loves to create an interesting story, colorful characters, and pen a brilliant turn of phrase. The writer sits back in his chair; his hands clasped firmly behind his neck while he admires his work. This is indeed a moment of pure joy for the emerging superstar (should I worry about carpel tunnel at the prospect signing one-million books?).

As usual,  there are stiff wages to be paid for this unholy pride and that is the editing process. Editing can turn a gifted writer, full of self-esteem and reduce him to a pedantic pile of self-doubt – yea, self-loathing. Many a new writer feels this loss of self esteem keenly after having received a “to do to correct” list from a professional editor. To add injury to insult, you just paid this, this person dearly to lovingly assist you. After all, you are the ‘talent.’ But he most likely has, as my son might say, torn you a new one. And the newer the writer, likely, the wider the new one.

Going Down - Phase 1. The writer’s immediate reaction to the editor’s suggestions  – “I just knew I was this bad”. “Why did I think I could write”.”Life is too short”. “I quit”. Then, Phase 2, "What does this guy know"? "Where did I find such a loser"?  "Etc". And the unsuspecting writer hasn’t even gotten to the literary agent yet – and the writer hasn’t even gotten to the publisher yet. Oh, woe is he. Phase 3. He inquires of other writers, and finds that he is in the middle of the pack because the editor utilized less than two gallons of red ink on his literary work. This is an initial C+ in the scheme of things – and he begins pulling himself up by the bootstraps and begins to face the literary world as it is and decides to deal with it.

That’s the normal approach to having your work edited. Sometimes a writer can obtain literary representation who will supply the editing functions as a part of the representation. For new writers especially (and the agents know who you are), this is a very long shot. If you can’t afford a professional editor, you will have to do it yourself. But this is an obvious contradiction in literary duties that should be handled independently from the writer for reasons that should seem all too obvious. But, what to do?

Let me introduce Serenity Software’s “EDITOR.” This computer program will grind through about twenty pages at a time – about six-hundred lines of tender, heart-felt prose. It will alert you to grammatical errors, punctuation, over-use of individual words, and observe that you have constructed a seventy-word sentence, suggesting it should be broken down into three or more sentences, among hundreds of other observations and corrections. The producers of this software caution you that it is programmed to allow only “formal” English to pass through its microscopic sieve. All other forms of English, will be called on to explain themselves.

The program will suggest that you tighten (use less words), polish (use different words) and consider (use alternate phrasing). It will spell-check for you and will alert you that a given word may have more than one meaning. The list of possible observations, suggestions and direct corrections can completely cover the analyzed manuscript. Corrections are generally required, observations alert the writer of a possible error and suggestions pose alternatives to your existing phraseology. The latter two results don't necessarily require corrections. 

As the writer prints out twenty pages and six-hundred lines of prose, his heart sinks as he sees perhaps a thousand iterations with explanations. Overwhelming is the feeling that initially washes over the writer. As a practical matter, in my case, less than a third of the iterations were required to be acted upon, but they all had to be read and decided upon. As an example of the iterations that did not required adjustment was my use of hyphens (as a replacement for a comma or semi-colon). Hyphens have little place in formal English, so as the veritable king of the hyphen, I faced quite a few alerting iterations therefor.

I began this process at about the half-way point in the book – I waited too long. I stopped writing for a month to catch up to myself. It was one of the most humbling exercises I have yet encountered in my long life.  But, as you might expect, it was one of the more instructional. In addition to generating far less iterations on the second half of the book than the first half, I applied the editing program after each twenty or so pages.

Would I opine that the computer program was better than an experience professional editor? No.