Editing, More or Less
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Editing an article about editing, 2022
What is “editing”? I will argue that the most important quality of “editing” is that it produces something that is beforehand not considered to be either sufficient or acceptable. There’s no getting around the idea that if editing is going to be involved, anything before it or without it must be incomplete.
If incomplete means “unfinished,” then we can appreciate the sense of “finish” as an adjective or as a noun, rather than as a verb. However, that same sense can challenge our terms of evaluation, because there needs to be a function performed by “finish,” and that function might range from mere decoration to optimization. We can get pretty self-conscious about the whole thing. Reputations can be at stake.
Let’s go with the latter, more ambitious version of the function and consider that optimization is indeed the goal of editing. We edit because we have an idea of why someone should care about what we are doing and what will convince them.
But editing is more than just constructing the right thing the right way, keeping the good stuff and eliminating the bad. It does, no less, turn the work that we do on the material of our piece into a performance, and it turns the material into forms of intentional expression.
The great thing about editing, then, is that it is a pursuit of a standard that we will declare, if not for everyone, then at least for ourselves. That’s how we get the work to pass the Who Cares Test, once we decide who the Who ought to be.
Selfie, 2008
The terrible thing about editing, on the other hand, is that it will also expose the inadequacy of the material, of the formative labor, or both. What if someone else wants your work edited, however?
This possibility is really the main existential question of editing. Does changing something make it “better,” or does it merely make it “different”? And how do we know when different amounts to better?
I propose terms for two different kinds of editing to address this question.
Exploratory editing is an avenue that seeks to discover what kind of meaning or value can be found and extracted from the material. It is experimental and is not worried about improvement: it likes improvisation as a mode of “improve-isation.” This kind of editing can happen when the maker is not involved with another party that makes the decisions about what makes the work worthwhile.
Conventional editing is what happens when there is a set of prerequisite production values that are intended to position the work for acceptance in a predictable way. Since that description perfectly accounts for the most typical notion of “quality,” we don’t have anxiety about keeping conventional editing in high demand. But as with most markets these days, the things that denote quality may give way suddenly if not entirely to a new set of preferences.
In my view, however, editing is essentially competitive; it is an application of technique against conditions that are not naturally cooperative. That’s the emotional experience. As for the practical experience, the goal is to figure out how your technique (good? bad?) can solve the problems posed by the conditions, so that you wind up wanting the outcome. If that reminds you of strategy, and of agility, then we’re on the same page, but I will make it even easier to point at and remember—it is design.
