Learning to trust: my journey as a neurodivergent editor
Growing up with dyslexia
Words have always been difficult. Growing up it was an uneasy relationship. Reading, anxiety and I shared a room — troubled roommates, forced into cohabitation.
As a child it had been different, I was always creative, positively brimming with imagination and constantly escaping into a different, brighter, more magical land. I had stories in me — stories within stories. I loved to play in these worlds with my friends and classmates.
But when I hit primary school, I realised that there was one fundamental difference between myself and my peers. They weren’t pretending, like me, to be able to read.
My trick had been working for a while now — when the teacher would ask what my book was about, I would make up a story based on the pictures. Simple. Later, when the pictures became smaller and the text bigger, my trick started to fail me. We were growing up, and I still couldn’t read. My stories had failed me.
My mother took me to the doctors, specialists, and we figured out what was happening. My brain was wired differently. I was dyslexic. But that didn’t mean I was stupid. We trained my brain, and I figured out that a healthy amount of study, planning and hard work could make me succeed in the classroom.
I find a love for writing, and a terror of editing
Years later, during lockdown, I discovered a love for creative writing. I had so many stories within me after all, writing them down allowed me to escape once again into a magical land. I finished my first novel, co-authored with my sister — a writer who has always been more neurotypically inclined.
I loved the writing, the creativity and the exploration, but the editing stumped me. I was content to let her edit our book for the most part. Surely the subtleties of punctuation, spelling and grammar would always be just out of reach. I would never be a natural, better to leave it to those who got it.
Becoming the lead editor
Cut to a few years later, we both decided to do the Professional Writing, Editing and Publishing course at RMIT. Due to unforeseeable timetable conflicts in my second year, I would have to take an advanced editing class.
In this class I would be forced to edit, develop and assist a photographer in any way I could to help produce a narrative photobook. This task was set to emulate real world editing practises that would mimic a professional collaborative partnership.
Ugh, I was sure it would be awful. I had only barely scraped by in the previous foundational editing classes. The finer points of the gerund, dangling modifiers, and use of the present perfect tense eluded me.
I could write fiction, sure, but edit someone else’s work to a professional standard? Never.
But the class demanded it, so with bated breath and utterly convinced of my inferior editing skills, I set to editing my photographer’s work.
Editing, collaborating and finding the narrative with my photographer
The first meeting with my photographer, Ingrid, went well. Her photobook, titled A quiet man’s life, documented her father doing everyday things around the house. Cooking, cleaning, renovating, going on day trips with the family, playing golf. Accompanying these pictures were sweet captions detailing his everyday life.
Ingrid was unequivocal: she wanted minimal editing. So when I received the first round of text to be edited, I set out to be as non-interventionist as possible.
Off the bat, however, there were some areas I knew I could enhance. Missing full stops, incorrect punctuation, incohesive styling and typos could all be worked on. But there was also something else that was missing — a sense of ‘narrative’ and connective tissue between the pictures. What was linking her father doing all these activities?
I did the light copyedit and waited … and waited. In my heart of hearts, I knew that the story was not quite there. Not yet.
Photography was Ingrid’s realm. Stories were mine.
Taking my place as editor
I decided then and there to commit. Fully. Regardless of — or perhaps in spite of — my own writing insecurities. I knew I could help Ingrid in ways she didn’t yet realise.
A quiet man’s life had been Ingrid’s title. So I started there.
In the end, I gave Ingrid two version of her photobook. One with the very lightly edited text she had asked for. And a second one that built off her premise but with a larger focus on narrative. Something we call in the biz ‘a developmental edit.’ This version focused on the everyday activities that created a good life. Family, connection, food, hobbies. But above all, love.
When I presented Ingrid with both versions, she quickly agreed that the narrative was much stronger with the second version. I was pleased that my hard work had paid off, and I had a moment of realisation.
There was a room for me here, as an editor.
Finding my editorial niche
I could help other artists who were brilliant in their own mediums, but perhaps lacked the training or experience to translate those skills to the written word. For too long I had doubted my abilities and sold myself short.
I could write, dammit. But more than that, I could edit.
I could help structure a story and point out areas of confusion. I could craft a damn fine sentence … and I knew how to punctuate it.
Maybe I would never know what a gerund was, and that was okay. I had stories within me. And I could help others tease out the stories within them. From the first spark of an idea all the way to print — I would be the bridge.
So in the end, I was grateful for the timetable stuff up that forced me to take that advanced editing class. The one the dyslexic child, forever stuck in a classroom where she couldn’t read, was terrified of.
I learned to trust: the process, myself, the stories within me and the stories within others.
