The different angles of ghostwriting and copyediting
‘If we do our job well,’ The New Yorker editor Mary Norris says in a TED Talk on copyeditors in 2016, ‘we’re invisible.’
I watched this talk two years ago for a class on copyediting. In my hastily scribbled notes, I didn’t include the line about invisibility, but it was a sentiment that stuck with me nonetheless. An editor’s work should not be detected by the readers; they should only hear the author’s voice and nobody else’s.
All my lessons in editing have taught me to approach someone else’s text with minimal intervention. My focus should be on syntax and grammar, the microstructures of sentences. If there are no agreement errors in ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’, then I don’t need to do anything. If a previous sentence already described the fox’s coat, or its speed, I might suggest the author cut some of the adjectives. The approach makes sense because no two people will write a sentence the same way.
But how do I apply this to ghostwriting?
One of the projects Advanced Editing students at RMIT undertake is a collaboration with students from the Photo Imaging course. Their assignment is to create a photobook following someone over the course of weeks or months; we are to be their editors. Upon request, we may also be their writers.
‘If there are two names on a book, it’s usually the second one who does the writing,’ Mel, my teacher, told me when I discussed it with her.
Ghostwriting can be looked down upon, seen as inauthentic because it isn’t all one writer’s work. Especially in the case of celebrities, Mel pointed out, even though most of them probably didn’t write their own memoirs. Gradually, though, it’s being talked about more openly — Prince Harry, she reminded me, has been public that Spare, probably the most talked-about memoir this year, was written with a ghostwriter.
I was comfortable being my collaborator’s writer; I can write relatively quickly if I have material to draw upon. What I was unsure about was the angle I should take.
At first, I approached the task as I do copywriting: to get a brief and start writing. I would provide the text to my collaborator, who could arrange it with her photos as she wished. Then, when we’d get to the copyediting and proofreading stage, I’d mostly be editing my own work, which I do every time I write. My resolve was strengthened when she told me in an email she had no notes or recordings from the time she’d spent with her subject. Okay, I thought to myself, she hasn’t quite figured out which facts matter to her story and what she wants to say. That’s why there’s nothing written down yet. I’m just going to have to pay extra attention when I meet her and she explains what she’s working on.
Then I met my collaborator in person.
I am not a visual thinker. I am an amateur photographer and I’ve made short films before, but I can only create imagery in that medium — in the sense of ‘visual symbolism’ or ‘description’ — not a whole story. So it’s a testament to my collaborator’s talent (and her teachers) that as soon as she showed me her photos, I knew what she wanted to say. The subject, often posed crouched, head bent, alone; the recurring images of water. This was a story about being far from home. This was a story about connection.
My assumption then was that my collaborator wasn’t quite aware herself what she was saying in those photos. It can happen when you get caught up in the details. Twenty minutes later, I realised I was wrong yet again. She knew what she wanted to say; she was unsure how to say it.
As we came to the end of our meeting, I advised her to write out everything she’d told me. I would polish it. She agreed.
This brought up another predicament I hadn’t faced before. Following that first meeting, the concern about someone telling someone else’s story started to weigh on me.
Everything my collaborator told me about the subject was being filtered through the lens of her experiences. Some of what she was saying was conjecture. And even when she was drawing direct quotes from the subject, how much of that was distorted by memory? Would the subject agree with what I’d been told?
The initial conclusion I made was to get rid of any language that hinted at the photographer’s own beliefs. Focus solely on what we could say for sure. Be objective.
But cameras don’t make a story more objective. Regardless of if these images were staged or not, my collaborator had still chosen to frame them a certain way. My own claim to objectivity was dubious because I was relying on second-hand information. My collaborator’s connection to the subject was part of the story as well.
She would give me her words, I concluded, and I would reformulate if need be.
But this doesn’t put the matter entirely at rest. As I said earlier, no two people will write a sentence the same way.
If this were a more professional environment, I would suggest alternative sentences rather than wholly rewrite them for the author. We did not have that kind of time, however. Furthermore, I couldn’t erase my influence on this story. I had given my collaborator notes just as she had for me. Just as she looked at the subject through her lens, so too had I given her different angles to explore.
As I worked on the text my collaborator sent me, Mary Norris’s words came back to me.
There wasn’t enough time to make myself invisible. But I could try for seamlessness.
If it wasn’t apparent, I love semicolons and enjoy wordplay, amongst other tells that make up my voice. I could keep those tendencies in check. I could rely on my collaborator’s words more than my own. I could strive towards a voice not my own, nor entirely my collaborator’s, that tells someone else’s story with the care it deserves.
I hope that readers will connect to the person this story is about. And I hope the story could bring its subject and photographer closer.
