In 2008, at the age of 40, I graduated with a Bachelor of
Environmental Management. Although there’s a lot of encouragement to return to
school and become qualified in something, anything, mature-aged graduates are
often a curiosity in the workplace. A number of my supervisors were younger
than me, none of them significantly older. While they had a lot of professional
experience that I didn’t have, they had no more life experience.
In just about any office setting, graduates get given the
dregs of work. Often this includes days of mindless photocopying or filing.
After all, someone has to do it and the graduate is probably a cheaper resource
than the admin assistant. As a mature-aged graduate, coming out of admin,
firstly, I wasn’t necessarily the cheapest resource and secondly, many of my
supervisors were uncomfortable handing such work to me.
In a moment of sheer desperation, one supervisor handed me a
chapter from an Environmental Impact Assessment and said, “Here, read this and
see if it makes sense.” And the rest, as the cliché goes, is history.
My input to that first report was very minimal. At best, I
proofread it. That is, I checked it for typos, spelling errors and missing
words. A senior colleague read it and corrected a whole bunch of things I had
no idea about (or was too insecure to change). I now work as a freelance
editor, freely suggesting changes, and even on occasion recommending some
documents never be published.
Am I brilliant editor? No, I don’t think so. My social media
network take great delight in pointing out my grammar fails. I am methodical,
with a well-designed editing process that takes an average corporate report and
lifts it its standard. My method depends not so much on my language ability as
it does on the step-by-step process that I apply to each document. Being a bit
of language nerd obviously helps, but even someone with solid corporate English
skills can improve their documents with the same process.
This is not a quick-fix process. It is time and labour intensive.
You cannot speed read or skim read. You cannot read just once through from top
to bottom.
Editing, whether you’re seen as qualified by the writer or
not, is a tricky balancing act. Imagine a friend coming to you and asking
whether they should marry their partner – an individual for whom you harbour a
deep loathing, considering them completely unworthy of your friend and a
general lowlife. Your friend, however, is absolutely besotted with them. What
do you say? Some of us would barge in, all truth and no tact, telling our
friend exactly what we think of the partner. Others among us would be so
concerned not to hurt or upset the friend we’d end up endorsing, if not
actually recommending, the marriage proceed.
For many people the stuff the write – whether it be a report
for work, a university assignment or a long-dreamed of novel – is an object of
obsessive devotion and love. The editor needs find a line between blunt truth
and wimpy complicity. The blunt truth just ends the friendship; the wimpy complicity
leads to longer term hurts.
As a ‘stand to the side’ corporate editor I had the
advantage of not having to take responsibility for whatever ended up going out
the door. I made suggestions, I offered alternatives, I put forward ideas, but
at the end of the day (or whatever the deadline for the document was) I was not
responsible. The author, reviewer and approver all took on that responsibility.
You may not be so fortunate. You may be the approver, the
one with the responsibility of signing off on the document. Biased as I may be,
I sincerely believe that is not the ideal. Ideally, editing should be a
separate process. The editor becomes not the friend being asked for advice, but
a counsellor. However, if you are cast in the role of honest friend, keep in
mind that honesty does not necessarily need a sledge hammer or a doormat to be
constructive.
Hopefully, this series of posts will give you some tips on how to approach editing without resorting to either extreme.
Hopefully, this series of posts will give you some tips on how to approach editing without resorting to either extreme.
Next time: four levels of editing.
