Life of an editor 2
Being real about how punctuated I am (lol)
Today I’m sitting down to read a manuscript I first read two years ago. The cool thing about my job is that I deal with manuscripts. That’s a good word.
What’s your script, man?
I mean it. What is your script?
That’s something you have to work out, as a writer.
I’ve been in constant denial about how self-conscious I am. Until, perhaps, today. Right now.
I’m constantly re-visiting posts I’ve posted here.
That isn’t an easy thing to admit, and yet, some part of me judges the person who just shits, and moves on. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to strive for perfection in the realm of writing. And perfection doesn’t mean flawlessness, of course. Sometimes writing off the scuff is perfect. And immediate. And felt. And raw. And cleeeeeeeeeeean. In its own natural organic way…
Which is what I’ve been admiring recently, and trying to put into practice here, a script which is freeeeee flowing and all juicy with the keyboard like because after all this is a blog, and there are the poetics of the blog to adhere to (because form matters.)
But today I realise I don’t blog. Can’t blog. It barely suits me. My voice be too, cripplingly self-aware, or—my self too, tremendously shy or something…
But what does that mean, in actuality, when I write?
And how have I been denying my true nature on the page?
I’ve been continually hoping that my voice could be so strong, the word choice so lifting that I wouldn’t need commas, or dashes—or my favourite, the continuous breaking;—
So I went through all my old posts and hoovered out the commas, and the dashes, and obviously the ellipsis…
But then I had to go back and put them all back in 😂
Because as it turns out, my voice can’t stand it.
And as lame and as unappetising as that seems (to me, truly) I am punctuation. Or, punctuation is me. Or heavily punctuated text is me. That is who I am.
In real life I can be messy… but on the page baby I’m, kinda sleek.
In other words heavily mediated and tightly modulating and quite keen.
It then just becomes a sorry fact of my (writing) life that sometimes I will read Reddit threads and YouTube comments with more aura and less punctuation than me. But I needn’t try to be them anymore because I will always be an uptight version of really effortless. Much better to try to jump and land my tricks—neurotically at first perhaps but then, one day, kinda swaggily.
As an editor, deciphering the technicalities of my own voice is important when working on other people’s writing so I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. If I can at least vaguely identify the parameters of my own voice then I should be less likely to project that onto other people’s—or at least be more aware if I do start to.
As for writing, you’ve got to be really strong and situated in your own voice to bring other people into it. A well-written book will make you shift gears from yours (cadence) into theirs almost immediately—sometimes even from the first sentence (if they’re really good).
What’s the ending here?
there are some real low caps unpunctuated baddies out there
and i have so much respect for them
(I wanna be you)
but unfortunately i’m a trained monkey. And on the page I like my perfection strung quite tightly. I wanna gurgle within the safe girdling of a pair of commas—or, between the foot-pedals of a nice pair of full-stops… I’m very attracted to the idea of writing anti-social things without ever slipping the maturity of a well-placed dash—and, if I can make the language self-aware without ever overpowering the meaning—that’s where I wanna be. At least today. Voice and vision. Passion and progress, baby.
At least a little more accurately,
Tilly
p.s. listening to this on repeat (smooch to maya)