About Editing and Writing

Be as gentle with the faults of others as you are with your own. — Chinese Proverb

When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills. —Chinese Proverb

He who knows does not tell. —Lao-tse

Before preparing to improve the world, first look around your own home three times. —Chinese Proverb

 

From the Writer’s Almanac:

Charles Bukowski was 13 when a friend gave him his first drink, and he, Bukowski, said, “This is going to help me for a very long time.”

He published his first story when he was 24; the story was called “Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip.” The rejection slip in the story reads,

“Dear Mr. Bukowski: Again, this is a conglomeration of extremely good stuff and other stuff so full of idolized prostitutes, morning-after vomiting scenes, misanthropy, praise for suicide etc. that it is not quite for a magazine of any circulation at all. This is, however, pretty much a saga of a certain type of person and in it I think you’ve done an honest job. Possibly we will print you sometime, but I don’t know exactly when. That depends on you.”

From the novel Lady In the Lake by Laura Lippman: The novel is set in Baltimore and many of the chapters are written in the first-person by a character in the story. This excerpt is by newspaper columnist Bob Bauer.

I am a columnist.  I don’t have to break stories, worry about getting beat. I don’t really do that much news anymore. It’s supposed to be a badge of honor, reaching the point where you’re above the fray, allowed to pontificate, or just write these little sketches about your own life. That’s my gig,  most of the time. . . .

The best editors are mostly warm-blooded—supportive and encouraging—but also capable of being cold-blooded enough to kill stories and fire someone when it has to be done. Ruth Whitney, the legendary editor of Glamour, once told me she didn’t like to get to know her writers too well because it made it too hard “to play lord high executioner.”

The best editors are inner-directed (by an internal gyroscope), not other-directed (taking cues from other people). (See The Lonely Crowd, by David Riesman.). The job of the editor is to work for the reader. Some editors, and many writers, are too other-directed and try too hard to impress other journalists at the expense of the reader.

Here is Paul Starobin, a reporter who knows Washington very well (though he now lives on Cape Cod, maybe giving him a wider perspective than the journalists who live in DC) commenting on Facebook about the Bernie Sanders attacks on the Washington Post:

Bernie Sanders: “And then I wonder why The Washington Post — which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon — doesn’t write particularly good articles about me. I don’t know why. But I guess maybe there’s a connection. Maybe we helped raise the minimum wage at Amazon to 15 bucks an hour.”

The idea of describing Mr. Trump with any word ending in “ist” has always struck me as risible. The suffix connotes the conscious holding of a principle or doctrine, whether good or evil—socialist, Dadaist, impressionist, Platonist, meliorist. But Mr. Trump doesn’t do principles and doctrines. The only “ist” word that can tenably describe him is “nationalist,” and that fits loosely and only sometimes. A racist or a white supremacist must at some level consciously hold definably racist or white supremacist beliefs; otherwise the terms are useless. Mr. Trump may have a neurosis that makes it impossible for him to abide by social conventions, but that does not make him a racist. His attention span is too short, his eye too firmly fixed on momentary advantage, to adopt a creed more complex than “Make America great again.”

From Ruth Reichl’s book, Save Me the Plums, about leaving the New York Times in 1999 to become editor of Gourmet magazine. In this short excerpt she describes how in 2009 she learned that the magazine, which began publishing in 1941, was being closed by Si Newhouse.
———

The interview had just begun when my phone began to ring. Tom Wallace’s number floated onto my screen.

“Yes?” In my current mood, I expected more good news. Even when Tom said I was wanted in New York, I didn’t get it.

In Yoko Ogawa’s dystopian novel The Memory Police, a young writer, trapped in an oppressive surveillance state, risks her life when she agrees to hide her editor.

—From a Washington Post list of upcoming books.

By Barnard Law Collier

To listen masterfully to the human voice is a gift that many journalists may think they have but don’t.

For several decades I’ve watched how dozens of reporters listen. By far the most significant trait is they turn off their ears before the speakers finish what they are saying.

They will later admit that they stop listening early in order to craft a reply to what they’ve so far heard so that they can have a fast comeback when the speaker concludes. A quick response indicates that the reporter is smart and well-prepared. A delayed response signals dumbness.