I recently saw a sportswriter on social media paying tribute to a deceased editor he’d had the pleasure of working with. “The best editors are a psychologist, a friend, an idea person, a life vest,” he wrote. “Every story written is a trust fall into an editor’s arms.” I don’t doubt this sentiment is well-intended or that this particular editor, God rest his soul, was a real prince. But in nearly two decades of writing, and occasional editing, I’ve never thought of exploiting my professional relationships to sort out personal problems, much less save my life.
Still, after reading this I thought maybe I’d been missing out on a significant perk by not being more demanding. Writing about the current state of American politics and culture is a dreary affair, so I pinged a very talented young editor I’ve worked with and told him I was feeling a bit morose. He suggested that watching an amusing video clip on the Internet entitled “Ow, my balls” would lift my spirits. I can’t say it was an effective remedy for my lingering malaise, but I will say this editor gave me a good writerly lesson in getting your point across succinctly.
I must admit I do have one intimate relationship with an editor who often acts as my amateur psychologist and life saver. In fairness, I explicitly asked her to sign on to this aspect of the job, and in response, she said, “I do.” Being married to another writer who can blithely offer withering evaluations of your professional output is pretty humbling. Well, it would be humbling, but my wife tends to read my work with an eye toward grammar. My grasp of the subject is largely intuitive, and she often corrects me using big, made-up words like “subjunctive” and “participial.” Nonetheless, I really should refrain from doubting her. Husbands who obnoxiously insist on arguing with their wives in spite of their better judgment have a saying: “Ow, my balls.”
I suppose I should also take this opportunity to thank the editors in my life—even those I’m not married to—for their dedication and forbearance. Their jobs can’t be very easy. My rough drafts are often just that. And I don’t mean “diamond in the”-style rough but manhandled-by-Hells-Angels-in-the-front-row-at-Altamont rough. I hope it counts for something that I’m constantly striving to improve. But I worry that as I grow older my tics as a writer are becoming even more pronounced.
For instance, I drop words when I write, often important ones. Sometimes the imputed meaning is obvious, e.g., “This sentence no verb.” However, I’ve found that if you omit a simple pronoun, your editor can be forced to play a rather frustrating game of Clue. The suspected antecedent could be any of the six proper nouns mentioned in the preceding three paragraphs, and it generally requires sending me a passive-aggressive email right before a looming deadline to crack the case.
Dropping words is, at least, an affliction shared by a number of other writers I know. Other of my faults are uniquely my own. A rather accomplished friend of mine, who used to work in the White House and now writes speeches for the CEO of one of America’s more august corporations, asked me once with some degree of earnestness whether I spoke English as a second language. It seems that being a native German speaker was the only logical explanation for my otherwise inexplicable habit of randomly capitalizing Nouns. I had to inform the former presidential speechwriter, Ich bin nein Berliner.
So, after all these years of professional experience, why can’t I write good? Well, when I’m in the process of thinking my Big Important Thoughts, can I really be expected to pay attention to the minutiae of communicating them? The value of my insights is undeniable. The rest is just lexicographic niceties.
Okay, this is a sorry and egotistical justification for being careless and otherwise not taking my craft seriously. I guess it’s pretty obvious at this point that I’ve mastered fewer of the fine points of my profession than is wise for me to admit. And if I had a point to make when I sat down to write this, I feel like I’m now hopelessly adrift in choppy waters. But I’m going to turn this in anyway. I hear that editors can be a life vest.
