The words we write and the lines that come from our hands are all reflections of our souls. When we read the words of the greatest poets in history, we can glimpse into the depths of their souls and their most hidden layers. That is the gift they left us. We cannot imagine that someone else interfered with their writing or even, God forbid, changed something in their words.
Because of this, many writers naturally resist an editing process with a professional editor. As writers, we feel that the editor invades our space, that she violates our most sacred temple, that she censors our soul, and that our personal and most private matters are being interfered with.
I remember the first time I went through such an editing process.
It happened when I was working on my first book of poetry, Mountains and Hills. I came to my first meeting with my editor and publisher, Yoav Gilboa, in a cafe in Tel Aviv. I went to the meeting full of fears: what if he told me to delete something I like? What if my voice gets lost, and the poems become more his than mine? What if I don’t like the new version of the poems over the old version? All these fears filled me with doubts and bothered me.
I shared my concerns with Yoav. Yoav listened attentively, and finally, after I laid out all my fears in front of him, he relaxed in his chair and turned to me.
"Have you ever been to one of the Azrieli Towers’ roofs in Tel Aviv?" he asked me.
"I did not,” I answered.
"Tell me, if you went up to one of those roofs and found out that there was no railing around the roof, would you move closer to the edge to get a better view?"
"Of course not, it's dangerous."
"Obviously. But if there was a railing there, would you then allow yourself to get close to the edge to see the entire landscape of Tel Aviv?"
"I think so."
"Excellent. It is very nice to meet you. I am your railings."
What Does An Editor Actually Do?
The main goal of the editing process is to make your poetry accessible to its target audience. The editor's job is to ensure more people can enjoy your poetry, even if they don't know you personally. Here are several examples of things the editor can help you with in the editing process:
Bringing clarity: The editor makes sure that the poems are clear to readers who do not know your inner world and are unaware of what concerns you in your personal life.
Strengthening the poem's goal: the editor ensures that the poem achieves the goal set for it by the writer. If the poem is supposed to convey a particular message, the editor helps ensure the message gets through.
Grammatical editing: the editor will go over your poems and make sure that there are no grammatical errors, such as spelling errors, incorrect punctuation, mixing of tenses, etc.
Literary editing: The editor will help you strengthen your poems by using literary techniques such as intertextuality, metaphors and images, prosody, alliteration, graphic forms, and more. All these help the poem to meet the readers in a more meaningful way.
Building poetic language: When editing an entire book of poems, the editor helps ensure that the entire book has clear and uniform poetic language. If the book does not feel like one piece but rather a bunch of unrelated poems, this may confuse readers.
(On a side note, note that sometimes there is a separation between linguistic and literary editing, and the same editor does not perform both, but this is rare when editing poetry)
Why You Should Not Fear The Editing Process
Despite all the justified concerns and fears, there is no real reason to fear the editing process.
First, the editor has no authority to delete or add anything to your poems. A good editor will offer alternatives, ask the right questions, reflect on what comes out of your lines and what doesn't come out of them, and other things. But after all that, if you as a writer prefer the original words of your poem as they are, that's your right to leave them that way. Ultimately, the editing process, like many other things in life, is a process of compromise. You don't have to accept every suggestion from your editor.
Second, a good editor is also a good reader, that is, a reader who will pay attention to the small and vital details you added to the work and exciting details that only your devoted readers will notice. After she reads the poems, she can tell you what she understood from them. As the author of the work, you will be able to learn from this whether your poems convey the message you intended or not. Without a good and thorough editing process, reaching these conclusions on your own is very difficult.
Finally, you must remember that your editor has probably read hundreds of poems in his lifetime. Your editor probably knows the ins and outs of poetry, what works well and what doesn't work well, and how you can make your poetry accessible to the audience you are targeting. His goal is not to erase your individual voice but to amplify and sharpen it, and that's what a good editor does. If your editor did a good job, at the end of the editing process, you'd say to yourself: "Wow, that's exactly what I wanted to say, and now it's even clearer." You will feel as if someone is putting a megaphone in front of your mouth aimed straight at the heart of your readers.
When There Is No Need For Editing
Ultimately, the editing process has a clear purpose: to make your poetry accessible to external readers. For this reason, if you write only to process your feelings and have no goal of spreading your poetry to as broad an audience as possible, the editing process is unnecessary for you and might even be harmful.
Some poets write for an audience, and some poets write for themselves. It is an emotional process. Some writers share this process with others, and some don't. If you are one of those who just write to express yourself and don't want thousands of people to read your poems, you don't need an editor. Keep writing, enjoy it, and don't stop for a moment.
However, if your goal is to move other people, reach a wide readership, and write good emotional poetry that will etch people's memories, you will have difficulty achieving this goal without a thorough editing process. In the end, there is no substitute for the editing process with a professional editor.
So, regarding the question in the title: Who needs editing anyway? The answer is simple: me. And you. Anyone who wants their poems to reach as large an audience as possible and move the readers' hearts.
If you feel ready for such a process and can't wait for the world to read your poetry, I am here for you. Contact me, and together, we will move your poetry forward.
If you have come this far, it probably means that you like writing, that it is essential to you to become a better writer, and that you like what you read so far in this post. I invite you to sign up on my website for more posts like this one.
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