Editing the unedited

Last Saturday night, I attended a literary gladitorial battle (okay, it’s kind of what I had in mind), part of the Scream Literary Festival, where this year’s theme was “The Book is Dead.” The event, STET, Redacting the Redacted, was meant to be, as I understood, an experiment. Prominent editors in Toronto (Alana Wilcox (Senior Editor of Coach House Books), Stuart Ross (Poetry Editor of Mansfield Press) Bev Daurio (Editor-in-chief of The Mercury Press) had been sent a poem and piece of short fiction to edit blindly (ie. the author was unknown, and, problematically, there was no given context for publication) and were to present their findings that evening, where the mystery author would be revealed. Sounds really cool, right?

The event attracted a younger crowd, presumably editors-in-training, who have long been fascinated by the mysterious, behind-the-scenes process that makes books, especially fiction, come into being. The potential for interesting debate on the value of a word, or a phrase, is the reason why many of us got into the industry in the first place.

Unfortunately, the experiment may have been a flop. Here are my reasons:

1. Context. The editors felt that because there was not sufficient context in order for them to fully explore the editing process. What if the organizers just invented one? Take the recent Walrus magazine issue. If your short fiction piece or poem is appearing in this magazine, it’s supposed to be quality, thought-provoking Literature with a capital “L.” What if the context was that the short story and poem were to appear in the Walrus Summer Fiction issue, and call it a day? If the editors want more context, well, just invent it for the sake of the experiment and leave it at that. I was disappointed to hear the discussion become a question of broad statements, like “The role of the editor is to make the author’s ideas better” and “Trust is integral to the relationship.” I mean, is this really new? I want to know more. I want to know what the reading process is like for an editor. What are the questions that the editor asks? What are your values as an editor? How do you know when the editing process is finished? Where does an editor draw the line between editing and rewriting? As an editor/author, do you write/read differently?

2. The Mystery Author. The editors also complained about how impossible it was to edit the work without having any contact with the author. They couldn’t ask the questions they wanted to. At this point, the moderator could have turned the conversation to what those questions were, and why they were important to the editing process, which would have made a worthwhile discussion in itself.

3. The Projector. The projector’s role was to project the works in question onto the wall so the audience could read them and the editors could refer back to them. Because the projection was so small, and often blurry, with one exception at the end with a fragment of the fiction piece finally adequately displayed, nobody could actually read what was being discussed. Once the mystery poet/author was revealed, they read their piece out loud, sans microphone, which made it difficult to hear, let alone retain. When finally, the short fiction piece, complete with Track Changes, appeared on the wall, did my ears finally perk up and audience members asked specific questions like “Why did you change this word to that word?” and “why did you cut that?” – the nitty gritty of the editing process where I think we all wanted to be. If this discussion had taken place earlier in the evening rather in the last five minutes, the experiment really could have gone somewhere.

Okay, so I hope that next year during the festival, the organizers can re-create this experiment and make it bigger and better. A great idea, a good effort, but let’s make it better next year.

The evening wrapped up on a different topic: that of websites like Shortcovers that, among other things, allows readers to upload their own content, their own ebooks. That’s right, ordinary people publishing without a professional editor or big company backing up their work. What is the world coming to? People were laughing! And at that point, I got a little frustrated. Isn’t this why the publishing industry is so behind the times and struggling right now? Because big companies cannot accept that they don’t have a monopoly on writing and ideas, or what people read? Journalism has jumped on the bandwaggon and has recognized the value in bloggers, even Twitters, as supplement, if not central, to their work. Anyone can upload their garage band recordings to iTunes, anyone can upload to YouTube…why not fiction writing? It doesn’t even eliminate the editorial process, it expands it to the entire online public, which, albeit scary for an author, is kind of cool. More democratic. Imagine, you read a piece of fiction online, and you make edits that you think would make a piece better, or ask questions about certain words, etc, the authors look at them, and makes his/her decision, then re-posts it… does this exist anywhere? Would this be a cool new model for publishing? Because media is moving (has moved, even) in this direction, whether we like it or not, and I don’t think content quality has really suffered. There’s always been bad fiction and poetry out there. If it’s possible, I think we should help make better writing, rather than just throw rejection letters at the problem.