ESSAY | MEDIUM PUBLICATIONS | EDITING
Editing for Medium Publications Can Be At Once Emotionally Exhausting and Rewarding.
I found to my surprise, that I become invested in my writer’s success
I am pleased to have been chosen to be an editor on three Medium publications: Illumination, Illumination Book Chapters, and Readers Hope. I began as a newbie editor. I knew I had a great deal to learn and little time in which to learn it. The owner and editor in chief of the publications is Dr Mehmet Yildizs. Under him, there is no kiddie pool for editors; there is just the deep end, which is where I landed.
I was anxious to do well by Dr. Yildiz and the writers whose work I would be editing. The ultimate job of an editor is to get the piece into publishable shape and publish it. There are rules on Medium that all writers must follow. On the Illumination publications, there are additional Submission Guidelines that writers must follow to be published.
I had to learn all these rules and guidelines plus the rules and expectations for editors, which, at the time, were not written down. Since then, and partly because of all the questions new editors like me were asking, Dr Mehmet Yildiz and some senior editors began writing them and posting them in a place only editors may go. These newly written guidelines made life a lot easier for me and a lot pleasanter for my writers whom I was editing.
All of that was time-consuming but not exhausting. Surprisingly to me, the exhausting part was the actual editing. Some of the pieces were longer and from accomplished writers. One would have thought that editing their work would be easy. But not so.
I found that I became invested in the piece. It would fascinate me. I would get caught up in reading every word, having to think at the same time about how one might make it better, about suggestions I could make to the author to improve it. No matter how well written any piece is, there are always improvements that can be seen, especially by a third person not as close to it as is the author.
I felt that it was my job not only to be certain the author followed all the rules and guidelines but also to think of ways the piece might be made even better and respectfully suggest them to the author. That turned out to be more exhausting than I thought it would be. And, to do it piece after piece for 10 or 15 authors in one sitting is even more so.
Other pieces were shorter and from less accomplished writers. I had not only to help the writer find and understand the relevant rules and guidelines but also to suggest places where improvements might be made.
For these authors and their works, I became invested in the author’s progress. I wanted to help them so they wouldn’t miss the same rule or guideline and make the same grammar mistakes next time. I found this surprisingly exhausting too.
All submissions to a publication go into a queue in the order received, oldest at the bottom. The editors have access to the queue. When they want to edit, they “enter” the queue and pick a submission on which to work. When they finish with one, they choose another. That is called being “in the queue.”
I found to my surprise, that being in the queue, working on 10 to 15 submissions each time, was emotionally draining. I would leave the queue exhausted. I would have to spend an hour or so alone, doing my writing or reading, to regenerate.
I had no idea it would be like that. I thought it would just be time-consuming; the thought that it might be emotionally consuming never occurred to me.
It also didn’t occur to me that it would feel so rewarding. I find that I take pride in my writers when we get a piece publishable. Some work very hard with me to do the job. I am incredibly proud of them when we publish one of their submissions.
At Readers Hope, we editors don’t do editing like that. To encourage new writers to submit articles or stories irrespective of their expertise, we suspend the rules and guidelines except for Medium’s basic decency and content guidelines. We don’t edit; we just publish.
We are available to any writer who wants editorial advice or a mentor relationship with an editor, but we don’t edit as we do for the Illumination publications. I don’t know yet, but I suspect that I will become equally invested with writers with whom I work. Whether it will be as emotionally exhausting is something that only time will tell. Though I’m betting, it will feel just as rewarding.
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