I have a tale to tell you
Yesterday, I came across a country song on youtube that I think is beautifully written (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or8UjHsFsl8). I love the musicality and the story the lyrics tell. I don’t know how music ads work, but it popped up as an ad, and I ended up letting the whole thing play.
The style sounds like a combination of traditional American country music and Celtic music; there’s no chorus, it’s just verses that tell a story in three “acts.” The youtube account it was posted under had no followers and there were no comments on the video yet. There’s two versions of the song – one sung by a woman (the first one I heard, and the one I linked above), and one sung by a man.
Here’s the comment I left on the vid:
They replied later today:
I’m going to keep track of their posts and continue to review their lyrics with my poetry editor eye, because I can tell they want to make meaningful music, and I figured they’d be receptive to constructive feedback. I’m glad I was right.
My best friend and I ran an online literary magazine for awhile, and I was our poetry editor. SO many people since then have asked me, “really? Does poetry even NEED an editor?” Of course it does. It’s a piece of communication – and for something to be an effective piece of communication, it needs to convey meaning from writer to reader in the way the author intended.
The best way to verify that is to have an editor review it.
There was one poem we published that was written from the perspective of a son, speaking to his father about how he was raised. Throughout the poem, he referred to the father in 3rd person (he/his/him), but in one of the last lines, he randomly threw in 2nd person (you). I said to the poet, “this shift can be powerful if done intentionally and for a clear purpose, but here it just feels accidental. Did you mean to do this?”
He replied, “oh, I totally missed that! I had gone back and forth on whether to write it in 3rd or 2nd person, but I did want it to be consistent.” So yeah, usually poetry only requires the adjustment of a single word – but it makes a huge difference in the outcome, since poetry contains fewer words overall.
I think a lot of artists (especially wannabe “artists”) make the mistake of thinking that creativity needs no refinement. But it’s like any other product, as soullessly commercial as that sounds. However, the word “product” just means something produced via a process; we call it the “creative PROCESS,” not the “creative EVENT” or the “creative MOMENT.”
We have moments of inspiration, but in order to produce something worthwhile and enduring, it requires refinement.
Plus, the fact will always remain that everyone will read/hear/see things slightly differently. I think the key difference between asking a good editor to review something and asking a random friend to do it is that an editor knows:
1. what to look for,
2. how to explain things in clear, concise terms, and
3. how to offer tweaks and suggestions rather than full-on rewrites that completely change the tone and intention
*Bonus points for being able to offer critiques in an empathetic, sincere way
Every editor has at least one of those three things down. A GOOD editor can do all three.
My experience in working with non-native English speakers in particular has allowed me to hone my ability to understand exactly what a writer’s intentions are, then help them adjust their writing to reflect that more accurately. I recognize it as a rare gift, like being an effective teacher is, and I love using those gifts to help people be better communicators.
I never edit my own writing, though – I am too close to what I’ve written to be objective. And I don’t mean that from an emotional perspective, although that can be true for a lot of people. What I mean is that I know what I meant to write. I know what I want to communicate, and my brain will automatically assume that I’ve done it. That’s why it’s so easy for us to re-read something we just wrote and completely miss a seemingly obvious error – we see what we meant to write, not what we actually wrote.
This bears out if you go back and reread something you wrote years ago; time creates distance, which creates objectivity. But if you don’t have time to let something sit around for a few years like a ripening cheese, then your best option is to find a good editor. =P
