I actually really like editing. It’s like writing but easier. I was editor in chief at the Fresno City College newspaper, so I’ve spent probably hundreds of hours looking over journalism student’s work. Leaving comments in the margins of google docs, breaking sentences apart and reordering them, turning quotes into paraphrases.
It was tricky back then because the paper was both a paper and a teaching tool—the students needed to repair their work themselves. I was just the one who diagnosed the disease. They needed to fight it off.
But editing for friends is different. Any writer could tell you that we’re always being called upon to look over somebody’s graduation speech, or thesis, or short story for a class, or personal essay for an application, etc. It might sound pesky but it’s actually one of the most fun things about being the “group writer.”
We all bring something to the table after all.
So a friend drapes something in front of me, something they slaved over for a couple hours, hit a few walls with. Something they aren’t quite sure about.
Imagine it as a broken bird in my hands. Imagine me cradling that bird and then reaching into it. Imagine I can rearrange its very bones. Joints go back into place, feathers reattach themselves, ligaments and muscles are repaired. I take its heart and make it beat a staccato and I make its blood flow again.
Noise becomes music and the bird sings. And—if I’m lucky, if I’m on my A-Game—it flies.
I fuckin’ love doing that for a friend. I extra love it when editing for them makes me have to adopt some of their voice. I can see how they write and filter it through myself. It’s like we fuse together like Gotenks or Garnet.
I can advise, but the final choices are always theirs of course. It’s a collaboration between us. Sometimes an edit is just a text message saying “I think you need to tighten it all up. There’s good stuff there but it’s buried under a ton of detritus.” Other times it’s a line by line tweaking.
Sometimes I’m moving paragraphs around.
But I admit, I’m taking a little too much credit. Because my friends are the ones who created the birds in the first place. I’m not the wings, or the bird, or the sky. I’m the wind. And on a good day, a great day, I can lift them.
So yeah, don’t ever feel bad asking your writer friend for help. They like it. Or at least I do.