What makes an editor?: And so can you!
Here’s a simple explanation: I’m an editor because my dad is a writer, and it was his editor who had an outsized presence in our home. You might think a journalist writing features for Esquire, interviewing big celebrities and publishing books was the most inspiring thing around. But my dad wasn’t that godlike, all-powerful presence—his editor, Mark was. “I can’t, I’m waiting for Mark to call!” “Argh, why hasn’t Mark called me yet?” My dad was always talking about Mark—Mark’s timing in returning phone calls is a source of agony for him to this day. I’m sure he’s laughing reading this right now—well, it’s all true. In a writer’s house, his editor is king.
Not that I’m interested in gaining power over the creative will of my father, this isn’t that boring story! It was really that, and I reflect on this often, I was probably one of fifteen kids in America who knew the word ‘editor’ in elementary school, and could provide some context for the intricate meaning of the role. I was incredibly lucky to grow up with artists and musicians and writers of all kinds, my parents and their friends, and my mom’s family, because very few kids grow up receiving the messaging that it is an option (and a viable career choice) to do anything creative, to not go to the office, but to stay home or travel and work with paints or strings or words.
The editors I knew did go to the office, and they were glamorous, too, magazine people when people paid for magazines. But they were creatives, and as much as it was about the posh parties it was about the “love of words.” Wasn’t it all style? In my world growing up, being a reader was a style. Above all else and for as long as I’ve been anything, that’s what I am. A reader, first.
Later, I heard the role of the editor described as the “first reader,” and that sounded a lot like me. It made sense. “First reader” was a role, a responsibility, and a relationship defined by what extends from it. Reading, as I knew from the very start, is just a way to get to people. A channel, avenue, tunnel out into the world. A trail left behind, a path out.
I discovered through my early work as an editor, and as a teacher during my MFA program, that the craft itself—the words, the syntax, the style, the structure—was an avenue to uncovering the deeper misunderstandings and limitations, as well as the true beliefs, resources, and gifts, of the writer. Most editors don’t really work that way—it’s not about investigating the source of the chosen language and discovering wellsprings of new inspiration for the writer. It’s usually about assignments, deadlines, and upholding the expectations and standards of a publication.
And that’s ok, that’s great, that’s a job. It was my job for a while. But I saw editing as a deeper process, of reading not just what was there, but what was absent; trying to read not just the words, but the person who chose them. My work as a writing coach sprung out of this ‘deep editing’ I couldn’t not engage in, where I could guide people (writers, my heroes!) to investigate their content (ideas) through the context of their chosen language, while raising their own expectations and standards for themselves.
This ‘deep editing’ combines the work of any good editor—skillful reading, thoughtful asking, and conscious listening—with interest and devotion to the full expression of who the writer is. What language has been inherited and gone unquestioned, down to the phrase, the word? What origin stories must be exhumed, what choices demand examination? What broken structures belie a writer’s stated belief in their argument? What inventions show a writer breaching old patterns, demonstrating multi-dimensional growth? What weak moments present opportunities for deepening engagement with an experience or idea? What digressions are dreams? What hesitations open doors?
This ‘deep editing’ demands a different process than most other editors learn. While I separate out developmental (structure, story, argument, and organization) from line editing (words and sentences) for the most part, I dive in to language I find in early drafts that I want us to look at more deeply. While other editors will wait to focus on word choice and sentence structure until a later stage, it’s my deep experience that wrestling with small language and syntaxes is often where much bigger, crucial questions about the argument, the story, and the identity of the writer relative to the material, get explored and answered. We wrestle with language in order to understand our ideas—what were we trying to say? Is that what we want to say now? This is why a writer needs an editor—someone who might know which words demand this wrestling and which are just words on their way somewhere.
Just like any editor at a magazine or book publishing company, I also have editorial priorities that people who work with me are aware of and seeking out.
For example, I prioritize fairness as an editor. Did you fairly consider other ways of seeing this? Fairness is not the same as objectivity, fairness is an objective. I prioritize the reader’s experience in balance with the writer’s goals. I prioritize the writer’s goals over my personal goals, in cases they are not aligned. I prioritize the experience the writer has writing over ignoring that experience in favor of deadlines and task-mastership. I prioritize sound and rhythm over clipped sentences written in “internet” style. I prioritize the reader’s experience reading over the “efficient” transference of information. I prioritize empathy and compassion in your writing and in our relationship.
As an editor, you have to be able to see things as they are, and as they could be. The First Reader identity helps you see them as things as they are, at different stages of the process. For example, my strategic priorities as an editor include:
Determining scope and coverage (what will be covered? what will be included? how deep will it go / what questions will it answer and not answer?)
Promoting structural balance and finding narrative cohesion (how can this best be organized to meet the writer’s goal?)
Questioning and suggesting language for clarity, rhythm, voice, and depth (is this right? does it sound good? does it sound like you?)
Interrogating claims and arguments (are they sound? are they ethical? do you understand them? do you believe them?)
…But as a First Reader, I ask simple questions: Is it good? Do I like to read it? Is it entertaining, not in addition to informative, but as a way to ensure the information being transmitted is fully received? Is the reader, me, having a good, valuable experience as I spend my time with this? As First Reader my duties include:
Asking for context and clarity where the reader might stumble (who’s that? what does that mean?)
Inhabiting the imagined reader’s position relative to the material (will the reader the writer wants to reach respond to this? does it resonate?)
Suspending critical presence to experience flow and narrative (am I ‘in’ this? what kind of experience am I having?)
I often call my noble dog Bird the First Dog, because her loyalty and sweetness remind me of the soul of the first wolf who ever sidled up to a fire at night where he would protect the people and listen to the songs the men and women sang and thought, “This is good.” (“First reader” also sounds ancestral to me, like something I’ve inherited through the germline—perhaps so.) If the First Dog loved the food and the fire so much he was willing to put his life in front of the people who welcome him home, then the First Reader has responsibilities too—ethically to keep the writer’s secrets, morally to uphold their spirit (and not waste their time), and to tell them the truth as she sees it. In return, she gets to spend a life reading.
It’s possessing the skill of reading—more than the skill of writing—that makes a great editor. You should think about that when you’re reworking your own drafts.
Not just anyone who loves to read can be a good editor, but you can’t be a good one if you don’t. You also have to read more deeply than gleaning, and you have to know what you might be looking for. Writers I’ve worked with ask, “How did you see it?” when I suggest shifting a late paragraph to replace a flimsy intro, or flipping two sentences to land the ending. This is where knowing what you might be looking for comes in. Like an animal at the zoo, it can be impossible to see the animal in its hiding place behind the glass—until you read the label, and suddenly there he is, outstanding by his name.
How I’ve come to know what to look for comes from years of experience reading and analyzing and learning the patterns writers tend to repeat and then the ones unique to each of them. It’s a second sight for me now.
I can also compare editorial eyesight to music, to having good pitch—you can hear when something is ‘off,’ whether it’s an idea that isn’t fully cooked or syntax that ‘takes me out’ of the line. But it’s not about forcing the writer into the music within me. The brain seeks patterns, and when your brain encounters something discordant it will attempt to re-pattern it into something it recognizes—move this here, change this word. But art is about breaking the pattern a little bit, so a great editing mind, which has seen a ton of patterns (has read a lot) can help the writer balance discordance with what a reader will be able to handle, process, integrate, or enjoyably experience, measured against the writer’s goals and intentions.
Because there may be discordance that is good—is it just something new, something in high style not written for everyone, or is it meant to challenge the reader in certain intentional ways, or echo the mood of the content, or some other reasonable explanation? Well, a good editor will make sure that they’re asking the writer about their intentions, to direct them to to make changes that will help them better achieve that intention with less discordance, or to help ensure that the intended discordance is wielded expertly, so the experience can be received. After all, reading isn’t always a luge ride, writing should be something of a challenge otherwise you and we are not learning. But, most nonfiction writers want their ideas to be understood, so we balance the necessary pattern-breaking of art with navigable structure, moments of rest and recovery for the reader to catch up, balancing risk with enough grounding so we can stay to learn and connect.
Seeing what you see and what could be comes down to being a highly skilled reader. Knowing what’s going to be what and what’s not comes down to asking and listening. What does the writer want? What are they trying to do? Where is this coming from? (What was it like? When did things change?) Who told you that?
“I’m terrible at editing my stuff.” “I hate the editing part!” “I just don’t know what to do with it.” “I don’t know how to tell what’s good or what’s working.”
I hear all this a lot when I first meet with writers and ask them about their challenges. I always promise that they can get better at the editing part—and even learn to love it. I know I do. I hope as you’ve learned in this post, editing isn’t just correcting what is wrong. It’s about discovery and discernment. These are skills every writer should develop, and can.
It’s also (of course!) about delight. Editing is extremely fun! To me, it’s like solving a puzzle that’s challenging but I know I can solve. I look at a page or a chapter, and even when I can’t see right away how to fix it, I know that I will figure it out—how to make it better, how to bring it closer. But it’s sharing that delight in language with people that matters to me the most. An engineer once told me, “Writing code is not about communicating with computers to get them to do things. It’s about communicating with people through computers.”
Working with people to free their voices and figure out how to use these words that are a gift to us all, for the ultimate project of connection, this an unbelievable gift that humanity invented, it’s absolutely amazing! How could anyone read a sentence and not be in total awe of us? We did this! You understand me? You understand me! It’s a miracle we created for each other. I love that I get to help people see how awesome it can be to really look at what we have. Each and every word you use matters, and why you use them matters too—when you learn to see each and every word as a miraculous tool for discovery and communication, you may learn to use this gift with greater conscientiousness, gratitude, and sense of responsibility. Engaging with your own work as a ‘deep editor’ will help you learn and relearn this potential.
Ok, so. Reading, asking, and listening from the perspective of an editor are skills I’ll be covering in more detail in my next several posts. I’ll walk you through my process working with writers as well, so you can see how it works from the inside—how does developmental editing work, what’s the process for line editing a piece? And I’ll help you set your own editorial priorities and values, whether you’re working on your own or others’ writing.
These skills of course will help all writers who want to improve their writing and self-editing, which is a big challenge for a lot of you. And if you’re pursuing a career as an editor, I hope these insights offer some perspective and guidance.
I’m also going to start sharing these in-depth posts with paid subscribers only. Weekly Friday prompts will continue to be free for all. The next post—coming next Monday and subsequently every two weeks—will be for paid subscribers only! I’ll be turning on payments then.
Please reply here or write to me with any questions you have or things you hope I cover under these topics! rachel@racheljepsen.com
