Cross collaborating. The importance of editing.
As you may or may not know, editing is the bane of my existence. I strongly dislike editing my work and I often dream of writing a perfect paragraph. Well, this will never happen. If you’ve stayed with me, please know that I’m going to be biased. I hate editing.
Editing can, no, definitely is, a tedious thing to do. For example: spending nights cold guzzling coffee while agonising on the position of a comma. Before even working on a photo book for the assignment I was so graciously tasked with, I knew I’d be in very stressful territory. While I knew techniques, such as line-by-line copy editing, I had no clue of the importance of images. I really thought they’d be important, but I was heavily focused on words.
Being an ‘editor’, I use this word loosely, I only felt confident in the language aspect, rather than the pictures. In this case, I had a huge problem. Confidence. In the photograph on the left, you can see a small paragraph; this is what you call an author query. They’re great for when you’re stumped, or want to suggest something bigger to the writer. By doing so, you can convey your thoughts to them, or even yourself. Notepads are excellent for self-noting things, as when you’ve solved something you can easily discard it as you please.
While waiting on my original photobook, I was given another photobook to review several weeks into the assignment. Despite my feelings toward the topic, I accepted the role of editor on the second as it’s better to experience more work, rather than stressing on only one.
While copy editing the Pokémon photobook, I started very strongly. In a matter of hours, I had copy edited everything, looked at the images, the flow and made contact with the writer. Everything went very fast, I didn’t even realise I was doing it.
If you’re a writer, definitely get edited. No matter where you are on the spectrum of writing, a new set of eyes is a good thing.
Cross collaborating is incredible. Your editor, or yourself, will create style sheets or rules if you will, to which your work will be looked at. If you’re somebody who doesn’t have a strong structure or format, you’re in great hands. If you use “double quotes” or ‘single’ your editor will look at every word, every clause, every single dash. In the photograph, you see the beginning of a style sheet. They’re incredibly important, as without one, we’d have no ground to go on if we’re confused. These help keep consistency and give clarity for writing when imposed. If you haven’t used one, please create one. They’re great for three in the morning editing sessions.
Another thing which is important with editing is you’re both in control. Editing shouldn’t be seen as a task you do before you publish your work, it should be a means of improving what’s already there and polishing it further to enhance your creative ability, yes there is a difference. I didn’t learn this until recently, after I saw the final product and it re-shaped the way I thought.
Editing on print and screen are great ways of viewing content, however, I preferred screen. Easy changes could be made and going over everything I began trusting my gut. Reading aloud is also another aspect that helps, as you’re hearing not reading. If you’re hearing something strange, it could be because you’re reading something which isn’t either grammatically sound or correct.
These are some of the few things I learned while working on the photobooks. You’ve got to trust yourself, your judgement. Don’t ever doubt yourself and take things slowly. Don’t push too hard. I also learned there are so many benefits from doing both this assignment, as well as further for my own projects.
There’ll be things I didn’t see which need correcting, the format will need looking at, that my ideas are clear and my writing as well as presentation are the best they can be before it gets published. Now, this is from someone who hates editing. But you have to admit, it’s important. If I think so, so should you. Now go out there and share your work and maybe you’ll learn something like I did.
