Creative editing before the launch: The Reader, Volume 2 - guest post by Aden Rolfe [02.11.2010]
At this year’s Emerging Writers’ Festival, Jill Jones commented that very few editors actually edit your poetry. In a later conversation about comics, it was a sentiment echoed by Pat Grant. And so it got me thinking, why are we reluctant to edit creative work?
One of the reasons might be that it’s difficult. I don’t just mean it’s hard, but that there’s no right way to go about it. It’s inexact and inefficient, and it can be a fraught process.
When putting together The Reader, my approach to non-fiction was to go in without hesitation, dirty my hands, strip out the organs. It’s not everyone’s preferred method, but I like it. You can tweak, tinker, massage and manoeuvre a piece into shape. If done well, it says, ‘This is how I see your work. You may not like it this way, or want it this way but at least you understand what I mean. Let’s discuss.’
If you take this approach to poetry or fiction, suggesting edits at a word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence level, it inflects the work with too much of the editor. Any changes must be taken away by the writer, erased, and remade in their own voice. And so, a more common approach might be to give broader feedback: ‘I think it needs to be more… less… what about…?’ This method is primed for misunderstanding, yet the former is neither as expedient nor direct as it is with non-fiction. And both take time.
When it comes to comics and visual works, Pat argues that editors don’t know how such pieces come together, or what can be changed in an illustration, so they’re unable to edit effectively. I can’t say I’m any different, or that I became any different in editing The Reader. I’m certainly pleased with the final artworks, but I’m not sure what I would’ve done if I wasn’t.
As for creative writers, many aren’t used to being edited. I’ve never had such work edited for publication, and neither had many of The Reader contributors. This might come down to the number of publications that are primarily selection-based. Writers submit work as a final or next-to-final draft, with the assumption that the piece is publication-ready. And as Jill attests, it’s an editorial method that sometimes carries over from journals to publishers.
With The Reader, I had the time to closely edit all the pieces, and I tried to give the same editorial attention to creative as to non-fiction work. The collection is the better for it, but it’s a luxury not all publications or editors have. It’s one that requires grace from your contributors, too. If I’d had more creative pieces, or ones that required more in-depth editing, I would have needed more time, or different approaches. And so I’m left to wonder, how do we build better editorial literacy around creative work? Or am I the only one who struggles with this?
Saturday 6 November, 8 – 10.30pm Co-presented with Penguin Plays Rough Applebee Orchard, 4 Lackey St, St Peters Readings by Darryn King, Gabrielle Maait, Felicity Castagna and others
Volume 2 of The Reader will be launched in Sydney and Melbourne:
Tuesday 9 November, 6pm Horse Bazaar, 397 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne Readings by Lou Sanz, Sean M Whelan and Sharne Vate
You can pre-order a copy here.
Aden Rolfe is a Melbourne-based writer, editor and radio-maker whose work includes poetry, collage and criticism. His writing has appeared in Overland, Cutwater and Best Australian Poetry, and his sound works have been broadcast on ABC Radio National. He recently edited Volume 2 of The Reader and directed the Critical Animals Creative Research Symposium.
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Comments
ashleycapes — 02 November at 12:35PM
Hi Aden, thanks for this post, I found it quite interesting, especially as I’ve recently noticed the same thing.
I’ve had a few poems edited by editors in journals over the years (always made the pieces better too) and I recently undertook some editing work on poetry while selecting the poetry for issue 8 of ‘page seventeen’ and found all of the writers very receptive to it, which was nice. Not sure if that’s always the case, but it was for me on this occasion at least!
Leigh Hay — 05 November at 01:39PM
Thanks Aden for interesting reading. As a freelance editor first, poet second, and someone who specialises in corporate & book editing, I find it very difficult when poetry colleagues ask me to edit their work. There’s no manual or style guide to say how their work should look or read, so in answer to your question – Yes, I struggle as well. I usually shoot from the hip and hope they accept a quarter of what I suggest. A hands-on, how to, what to look for, way to go creative style guide would be good. Anyone know where to find a a copy?
Leigh Hay.
Ryan Paine — 09 November at 11:25AM
You’re certainly not alone, Aden: ‘editorial literacy’ is a new phrase to me, but it articulates an idea I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about – namely, that no one really knows what goes in to editing a creative work. We can’t all be Gordon Lish and publish Raymond Carver’s stories before we hacked at them, to show how much work we did.
I have as much experience editing non-fiction as I have editing fiction (from short works to books), and I actually find the latter easier, because that seems to be my own, natural mode of expression. I guess also I’m not one to let facts get in the way of a good story, so I’d much rather let my imagination run wild than have to stop it and do a global search/replace for the various, incorrect instances of, say, a sensitive proper noun. That said, it’s important that my imagination doesn’t run too wild and, as you say, intrude on the creative intention of the author.
It’s a tricky balance, but one that I find is made easier to moderate by preceding any critical feedback with positive feedback. It’s a simple, but immensely effective device, massaging the author’s ego to make way for the critique at the end of the report, and almost always makes the author feel sufficiently loved that they know you’re working together on improving the manuscript, not deconstructing it to its various ailing parts.
Part of how I’ve come to terms with this is by writing self-validating aphorisms, such as this one: http://ryan-paine.com/2010/10/30/the-author%E2%80%93editor-relationship/
In response to this on the EWF Twitter chat, I suggested ‘mutually consensual public editing with Google Docs might illustrate the nature of our work’. I wonder if you (or anyone else out there) would like to be involved in an experiment like this.