This models a good amount of reflection and humility. It's hard to take a rough critique. At least when it comes to code, there's an ultimate ~deterministic oracle (and style concerns can be respected or dismissed).
I vaguely thought I had a good bi-directional editor<->poet friendship during undergrad, but it fell apart over some personal issues. We've reconnected, but I ~lost my muse in the meantime.
I've also wondered a little if it'd be worth trying to form something on the spectrum from a little editor dyad to a tetrad for technical blogging.
I've been thinking about writing a few articles on my experiences so far in writing the editor. Sorta covering what I wrote above. I could definitely work in some stuff on architecture and design choices. When I get around to it, I'll post it on my blog, and most likely submit it here too. Hopefully you'll find something useful in it!
Do you have any idea what the career/educational path of your editor was like? While it's not a career I've ever thought of having, I've lately realized that at even a portion of that level of skill is a powerful thing to have.
Funny (and costly) story. My friend Stacey and I started a magazine. Midway through working on the first issue, we realized that we didn’t know a thing about publishing. So, we recruited a third co-founder.
That magazine eventually failed but I was hooked. I started paying her to help me and when her life got too busy, I started paying other editors.
Once I worked with one, I knew exactly what I was looking for so it’s been easy finding editors since. Without that experience, it would have been a lot of trial and error. For example, I can write very quickly. Because of this, I write far better when I work with an editor who really tears my work apart. If an editor sugar coats too much, draft+1 often ends up worse. But if they’re direct and try to hurt my feelings, draft+1 will be closer.
>I doubt even big technical publishers have much if anything in the way of technical editors
hence my second paragraph. I figured the first paragraph shot down the idea of technical editor as a career instead of a position that one just lucked into, and the second paragraph explained that by understanding the one type of company you might expect to find the most technical editors actually doesn't use technical editors but instead normal editors.
This is a very inward-looking article. All of its seven points add to the conversation, but they seem overly focused on mechanics, rather than vision.
The best editors have a uniquely good understanding of readers' aspirations, anxieties, interests, etc. Such editors are equivalent to startup CEOs who can sense what a new product needs to be -- and how it will electrify the world.
Some editors communicate this very clearly, with maxims that everyone quotes. Others make it come to life in opaque ways that are both brilliant and frustrating. And OP is quite right that this is often a team exercise. But one way or another, the best editors get the vision right. I've heard it said that a successful magazine isn't just a collection of articles; it's a thrilling club that invites the reader in, to become part of an almost-magical grouping of like-minded people.
What's not covered -- but should be -- is the question of how long a visionary can stay ahead of everyone else. The longest-serving editors often have a period of decline near the end, when they become quite cranky and rule by fear. Staff turnover becomes high. The old vision starts to feel stale or brittle. People keep waiting for the boss to have another flash of inspiration that will get it all on track again, but such hopes are satisfied only intermittently, if at all.
It's hard to be brilliant. It's even harder to be brilliant for more than a decade.
I've taken the editor role in a couple of recent contract jobs. While the clients were both complimentary, I think I didn't do too well for one of them, where I came in to an existing codebase with a shortage of domain knowledge -- and this is going to be a general problem for a specialist editor, more so than with prose. I was more like a copyeditor. (For the other client I'd written the code they started with.)
For a moment there I thought they were going to try and bring editors back to the publishing process. The blog gave us open publishing, anyone who wants to can push up their words. What's missing though is the polish and refinement that the editorial process gives more traditional publishing. When they started talking about choosing the level of participation I was expecting them to say that people could now choose to be editors. I'm not sure exactly how the interactions authors and editors would self-organise into useful pairings/groupings but if we cracked that I do think we'd see higher quality emerging.
Perhaps people could create their own 'zines from other people's articles. They choose the articles they like, and then refine the tone and content to form a coherent publication.
>It requires you have someone who is already excellent at technical writing.
100%. You can probably help everyone on the team (to some degree) who is willing to do some work to improve. But you probably want one (or ideally two) people who can work with people and are the gate to actually publishing anything. They don't need to be a dedicated resource and don't even need to be "professional" editors. But they do need to be able to work with people and have strong writing (and copyedit) skills.
> One that's hard for an intrepid band of volunteers to recreate without funding and full time commitment. Who will be the editors?
I've been a reviewer and editor for various IEEE and other engineering publications and have never been paid. Of course funding for editors is helpful, yet it may be like open source where some are willing to put in work for free.
As someone who edited various technology magazines for a decade or so, I wish someone had told me this. There I was going through life, thinking my job was to ensure a mix of stories that would be interesting to the targeted readership, that read well, that could be properly 'stood up' as factual and didn't land us in too much legal trouble.
Oh - and to make sure the pages were filled on time and budget and that the editorial staff were reasonably happy, and that we referred to companies in the singular.
Yeah editor chat isn’t a bad sign, I enjoy it, but I also don’t put a whole lot of stock in it. It’s a plus if someone can explain their editor choice through original arguments delivered with passion and conviction, but that applies to any number of technical topics.
I feel like your point was missed in the sibling comment. An academic review of editor history would be fascinating, and if it thorough enough might even inspire editor authors to adjust their philosophy.
This models a good amount of reflection and humility. It's hard to take a rough critique. At least when it comes to code, there's an ultimate ~deterministic oracle (and style concerns can be respected or dismissed).
I vaguely thought I had a good bi-directional editor<->poet friendship during undergrad, but it fell apart over some personal issues. We've reconnected, but I ~lost my muse in the meantime.
I've also wondered a little if it'd be worth trying to form something on the spectrum from a little editor dyad to a tetrad for technical blogging.
reply