Editing is a nasty job. It takes time, it takes precision, it takes scrutiny. There are many different types of editing, but the fact that editing is difficult and necessary holds true for all of them. Since I am pursuing a career in editing, I chose an article that has to do with writing, the building blocks of my future career. Naturally, in my field, writing is very important, and so is the insurance of the future of writing. In a computer-based world, there are no guarantees that writing as we know it--in books, newspapers, magazines, etc, essentially in print form--will even exist in a few short years. This makes me panic not only because I want to pursue a career in this field, but also because I think that getting rid of print would be such a loss to the entertainment arts as well as have a great effect on the literacy of our society. So, I chose to review for this assignment the article, "We Are All Writers Now" by Anne Trubek.
In the article, Trubek discusses scholars' relcutance and "profound scorn for the newest forms of social media." Countering the opinions of her own professional colleagues, Trubek points out that, "the rise of amateur writers means more people are writing and reading" and that "we are seeking out communities based on written words." In commenting on this article, I used both free-flowing thoughts and commentary on the content itsel, as well as editing it for style, prose and correctness of grammar, etc. This assignment allowed me to write down and take notes about the thought processes going through my head--just as they happened. What is so interesting is that these thoughts and ideas about what I was writing happen each time I read something, I have just never tried to channel these thoughts into an outlet as they were happening; the result is that I realized with a better clarity my opinions and ideas on the subject matter of the article after reading through my comments and notes.
In my comments I was both humorous and comical, critical and open-minded, as should be the way of any good editor, or at least, in my opinion. I did not try to keep an even tally of both humorous and serious comments; I simply wrote down whatever first came to mind. Some comments helped me to put some of my ideas in perspective, while others demonstrate my ability to multi-task (or that I secretly have ADD). For instance, my first comment asks whether or not it is necessary to use words that the average reader cannot understand, with arrows pointing to two words ("screeds" and "pundits") for the purpose of this article, while the second comment is just a line from a movie that popped into my head when I read Trubek's made-up compound word, "time-sucking." The first comment helped me to realize, after reading it again, that Trubek did not write this article for the people about whom she is writing, but rather to the scholars she is contradicting. Would I have caught that detail if I were editing this article regularly (just reading through it and trying to tack on comments when needed)? Not necessarily. Usually in editing, I think about comments before actually marking up someone else's work. But this almost seems like a whole new method for editing to me. By writing down what you think at that very moment, you find things you may not have otherwise, such as the validity of word choice.
Something else I caught myself doing was writing comments on what I liked and didn't like about certain phrases and ideas--like the average reader does. Rather than over-analyzing whether or not these phrases really worked, I simply wrote down what I thought about them right then (like "that's sad" or "love it!"). And, again, after perusing the article a second time, I realized that these phrases really did work--they appealed to me as a reader for whatever reason, and, therefore, the article itself was doing its job. This was the stream-of-consciousness writing coming out, and it worked very well for this assignment.
I didn't realize how much this kind of note-taking/stream-of-consciousness writing would help me with my own field until I did it. I thought it would be a fun approach to editing or critical commentary, but had no idea that it would open up some new possibilities for editing itself. The freedom to write anything on a piece of writing--good or bad, critical or humorous, relevant or irrelevant--brings out my inner editor at its very best.
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