Life Editing Imitates Art

Often, far too often, editing can drive you a little nuts—and every once in a while, totally batshit crazy!

There are, quite literally, hundreds of ways that this profession can be hazardous to your mental health. Count me among the many editors who would place authors, for what they do (sins of commission) and/or don't do (sins of omission), squarely at the top of the list. Next on the list would be a very distant second indeed.

An editor friend made reference to the classic 1944 film "Gaslight" to describe his current editing project. This is probably the best metaphor I've ever heard for what editing can, on those TBC occasions, feel like.


Here is what "Paula" (Ingrid Bergman) says to her husband, "Gregory" (Charles Boyer) after he gets busted. It perfectly mirrors what many editors feel with regard to some of our authors:

"If I were not mad, I could have helped you. Whatever you had done, I could have pitied and protected you. But because I am mad, I hate you. Because I am mad, I have betrayed you. And because I'm mad, I'm rejoicing in my heart, without a shred of pity, without a shred of regret, watching you go with glory in my heart!"

Don’t go to sleep edit angry.

Editors, when they’re working, can be a very angry bunch. With apologies to Alexander Pope, if we had a motto it could be, “To err is human, to forgive is out of the question.”

Whether it’s ignoring style manuals and publishing guidelines, and demonstrating that they’ve forgotten or are rejecting what they learned in English and writing classes, many authors really get our knickers in a twist.

The book I’m currently editing is filled with so much crap (nonsensical writing, seriously incomplete references, free-for-all capitalization and punctuation, end note numbers in text not matching end notes, etc.), I’ve been pissed off almost the entire time I’ve been at this edit—more than a month now, part time.

And, my, how my anger has affected my work. As I close in on the Wednesday deadline (appropriately falling on April Fools’ Day), I find more and more things I’ve missed, from the introduction straight through to the conclusion.

As far as I can recall, when I started my editing career back in the eighties I didn’t experience this anger phenomenon. It began perhaps a couple of years ago.

My inner, angry editor is actually uncharacteristic—I’ve grown more tolerant, of everything, as I’ve matured. To what, then, do I attribute this powerful reaction to author errors that earlier didn’t even cause a ripple? One word: BURNOUT.

Lazy

I'm editing a new book by one of America's top intellectuals.

He has, among other things, founded a think tank; been a professor at Columbia, George Washington, and Harvard; served as a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and a White House advisor; and published more than 20 books.

The book deals with many of the current geopolitical and sociopolitical issues faced by the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. While some of the material is new and was written for the book, the author to a large extent drew on his past writings.

As a result, the book is woefully out of date with regard to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the global financial crisis, and the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign and election.

In addition, the rampant inconsistencies in style, and the structure of endnotes and references, suggests that the book was cobbled together by perhaps a grad student.

The author will not be pleased by the number of queries he will face when he receives the edited manuscript.

But when an author recycles past work and tries to rest on his laurels, the editor stands between him and the reading public who expect a book that reflects the author's expertise.