Dbo: Thoughts as a Writer

I want to build off Jade's comment in our last class about how disheartening it for an aspiring writer to see the unveiled editing world. Although, I don't write as often as I would like to, I have been writing fictional stories longer than I can remember, and so I consider myself a writer.

Many of the materials we have read in the course thus far (Hothouse, the Paris Review interview, and What Editors Do excerpts in particular) seem to glorify the editor's role in publishing. From the sampling we've looked at, it seems that the best editors have at least a confident if not an inflated view of themselves, which is only bolstered by many of the writers they acquire and support. These editors tend to enjoy what they do, and I think it's safe to say they romanticize the trade a bit. There have been moments when I start to wonder if I want to be an editor because they make it sound so wonderful and heroic.

But then we talk about editors like Gordon Lish and writers like Jonathan Franzen, and publishing loses its luster. I am reminded that it is just like any other business. There are praise-usurpers, mind-manipulators, and racist, sexist jerks. The world that perfects and distributes the stories that we all treasure and the world that many writers aspire to enter, is not nearly as perfect or magical or entrancing as anything it produces. It's actually none of those things. It's just like the rest of the real, wreck of a world we live in. And if a writer writes to escape this world, and he or she wants a book to transport readers from this world, it is disheartening and somewhat scary to consider that before a book can reach readers, it has to go through a bit of the real world. And I guess as writers we just have to hope that it comes out the other side that perfect, reader-transporting, masterpiece we always dreamed it would be.

So I think that was a long way of saying that I relate to what Jade was saying last class.