This Conversation Made Me a Sharper Editor

I’ve always struggled to explain to people what exactly I’m doing when I’m editing. Reading — definitely. Fixing — most definitely. But fixing what, exactly? Beyond grammar, typos, and inconsistencies, it can be difficult to explain. Last year one of my favorite movies that I saw was the documentary Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, which covered the careers of the author of The Power Broker (Caro) and his editor (Gottlieb). It was kind of thrilling to see my job depicted on the big screen and the documentary captures the work and relationship of an author and editor beautifully, I think. At one point in the movie Gottlieb says, “Editing is intelligent and sympathetic reaction to the text and to what the author is trying to accomplish.” He also referred to the work as “service work.” I couldn’t agree with these sentiments more. I do think that a lot of what I’m doing is reacting to what’s on the page.

A couple of weeks back The Ezra Klein Show ran a great episode titled, “This Conversation Made Me a Sharper Editor” which also does a great job of demystifying the art of editing. In the episode Klein interviews Adam Moss, the former editor at New York magazine. Moss just wrote a book called The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing in which he interviews artists of all kinds to find out their creation process. It’s a fascinating conversation in that so much of making art revolves around editing yourself. And how do you do that? Again, it’s difficult to explain, but the stories Moss shares shed a little light on what it’s like. I definitely need to get myself a copy of this book.