Making words sing

I have a hard time making people understand what an editor actually does.

“Oh, you correct grammar?” people inevitably ask when I say that I’m the editor of a magazine for teenagers.

“You check sources and quotes, right?” others ask.

It sort of makes me want to scream. Would you ask someone who just told you they were the editor of say Newsweek, Time, or GQ those questions? Probably not. And when I try to explain that those tasks are something copy editors (or production editors as they’re called where I work) do and take a lot of talent, time, and skill, most people outside of the publishing world don’t have enough working knowledge of how a magazine is produced to get what I’m talking about.

And that’s fine. I don’t expect everyone to understand. Not everyone went to journalism school. Not everyone has fallen deeply in love with the written word.

And sometimes, I find it downright difficult to find the words to describe what I do as an editor.

Yes, I have to know grammar. Yes, I rewrite things and put in commas and make sure quotes and sources receive attribution. But editing is more than that, at least if you strive to be a good editor.

I’ve described my job as having a vision for the magazine and being in charge of making sure it is apparent in each issue we put out. I’ve said editing is about making the magazine cohesive and tying it all together. It’s about pacing and which stories go next to each other, and deciding what stories to cover and who can best write them. It’s about making a point and not letting words, phrases, and other stuff get in the way. I’ve even said that editing is about taking a writer’s story and seeing what works and what doesn’t, then polishing it into a diamond.

A good editor doesn’t just take what a writer gives her and correct a few comma splices and misspellings and move on. That’s not editing.It’s copy editing, but it’s not editing in the way an editor of a magazine should work. The editor is the cohesive element that ties every part of the magazine together, like the director in a movie. Editors decide what story the entire issue is telling and how the different pieces fit together.

Yesterday, we had a training session at work taught by a professor I had in college. Oh, how I had loved Dr. Ranly in J200, and I was challenged by his knowledge of grammar and drive for Mizzou journalism grads to not only have a working knowledge of grammar, but also a desire for excellence in all areas of journalism work. And yesterday, he gave a definition of editing that put into words what I’ve been trying to do as an editor ever since I became one.

Editors, he said, make words sing. Editors work with structure and grammar and rules (and sometimes break them) and writers (and sometimes mock them) to make words dance. To make pictures appear in the reader’s mind. To teach. To remind. To tell a story that lives on long after we’re all gone.

So the next time someone asks me, I’m going to say that as an editor, I make words sing and dance. I don’t know that my answer will help clear up what I do in anyone’s mind, but I know what it means. What I do is make the story shine. And somehow, that’s important.

Not everyone has to get it. 🙂