How to Become an Editor (Against Your Will)
Just do it. Seriously.
Editing my first book (Anzel Nichols’ The Experience) challenged every fiber of my being. Well, sort of. Editing mostly meant drinking a lot of Lipton tea, and glaring at poems on my desktop—removing commas, and struggling to maintain the poet’s voice, while increasing the readability of the work.
How I Got Tricked Into Editing A 125 Page Book
Tricked fails to capture the experience, but comes close. I emphasize tricked here because I had no idea how rewarding the experience would be.
I met Anzel Nichols in 2010, is freshman year at the University of West Georgia. We quickly became friends, and I started editing his English essays, and having weekly discussions about art and music in my apartment. Anzel struck me as a well-balanced guy, with a great upbringing, and an uncanny focus on becoming a better version of himself. He mentioned many times that he wanted to write a poetry book, but I did not realize, until a few years later, how serious he was.
Anzel invited me to his house for Thanksgiving in 2012. While at his home in Stone Mountain, I worked on a great deal of my own poetry (for a seminar with Chad Davidson). To be honest, at this point, I possessed a great deal of reticence with regards to Anzel’s work. On one hand, I found it captivating, since it blended elements of slam poetry, hip hop lyricism, and traditional poetic form.
You see, unlike me, Anzel approached poetry from a non-traditional position, and did not possess the same familiarity of the Western canon and traditional form. In many ways, he represented an outsider, while I aimed to become an insider. What troubled me even more: he did not give a damn. He embraced his lack of formal training in poetics, and unabashedly blended bluesy croons and rhymes in his live performances with guitarist Henok Malede.
At another level, I felt a great deal of anxiety about editing a collection of poetry, because I did not feel confident in my own poetry. (In fact, I still do not, especially since I do not write regularly anymore.) I failed to voice any of these concerns to Anzel, because he was confident that I was the person to edit his work. I now believe that he chose me to edit his work, because I was intimate with the material he was discussing. Put differently, I understood the various elements of his work, and we’d had many conversations about the work.
Last summer, a few months after Anzel graduated, he sent me all the poems he had written while in college.
I knew at this point that there was no turning back. It was time to roll up my sleeves, and turn on the kettle.
I dodged Anzel for most of the summer, and did not work on editing with much vigor. To be fair, most of my time from May until August was occupied by a robotics internship at Georgia Tech. To be honest though, I was still scared about editing, and depressed about doing research (at the lab) that I was not fond of.
In July, Anzel called me again. He informed me that his mother was sick. We talked for a long time about pursuing our dreams, and doing things that mattered. After graduating, he reevaluated a lot of relationships, and was more convinced that his collection could speak to a generation. I was really glad to hear that he had been doing more live performances with Henok.
I told him to send the collection again. I promised him, again, that I would work on the collection. I somehow hoped that seeing it again in my inbox would inspire me to work on. It worked.
I started, earnestly, working on the collection in mid August, and by late September, we had a collection that we were proud of. Anzel spent a week at my home in Carrollton in early August, and that really helped us get a bunch of work done. On hist last day in town we finalized the manuscript (introductions, epilogue, etc). An important decision we made while together was to only include about half of the poems in the final manuscripts. We chose to do this because some pieces did not fit the narrative we’d created. Anzel later released several of the other poems in a collection called The Prelude.
After completing collection, I took a step back, mostly to finish the semester (complete with debate tournaments and four programming classes). Meanwhile, Anzel began working with Amazon’s CreateSpace to get the work released as an eBook, and eventually as a physical text.
Last week, roughly five months after completing the manuscript, I received my paperback copy of The Experience. I regret not working more closely with Anzel through the CreateSpace process. However, I believe that he learned a great deal from doing it alone. I believe that authors (and creatives, generally) can benefit greatly from taking ownership of the marketing and production of their work.
What’s Next?
Now that my name is on Amazon (step 1 of my master plan to become Jeff Bezos’ protege) I have the itch to do it again. I wrote recently that receiving the paperback spurred me to write more—hence, this article. It reminded me of a promise that I made to childhood friends in Nigeria. It also reminded me of the hours I spent writing as a boy, and dreaming of life as a writer. Mostly, it reminded that I loved helping people achieve their goals, and watching Anzel own it as a writer is more that I could have bargained for.
I got hooked into editing The Experience. Now I can’t wait to edit something else. Anzel and I will start working on his next collection. There are a bunch of mistakes we made this time, that we will attempt to rectify. (I will write more about that soon.)
If you love to write, edit, paint, etc., stop putting it off. Just do it. Seriously. If you need help, encouragement, etc., please contact me.
