The Easy Part

An editor doesn’t simply read through a text, line by line, and fix errors in grammar and punctuation. That’s the easy part — the reward that an editor like me gets to do after the first 99% of a project is complete.

The first step in a project of this magnitude is collecting, organizing and reading through several thousands of pages of source material.  In our case, the material ranges from the 1960s to the present, and includes journals, letters, audiocassettes, video recordings, photographs and drawings.

During this stage of editing, I often feel like I’m in a dark room with reels upon reels of old film. I’m watching. Taking it all in. Trying to get a sense of a whole. There’s no fast forward button. I watch in real time

Next, we cut. We need to make a document, however incomplete, that our team can all read and discuss. Nothing ever gets deleted; files just get moved into invisible folders that we can access later if we discover we’re missing a piece. This initial document is messy. It’s unedited. There’s no narrative structure. But it begins to tell a story. Right now, we’re going back to the primary source material: more collecting, transcribing, and interviewing.

Our goal is to tell this story the best way we can. Because we know, for certain, that it needs to be told. We’re only a couple steps into a very long process. We’re often humbled by its hugeness. But we’re committed.

~Ali, editor, Bad Hair Day on Planet Earth