What Is Editing?

If I ask you, “What is editing?”, I expect you’ll say something like “Making things sound better” or “fixing errors.” Those answers are correct, but they are woefully incomplete.

The very best editors may not concern themselves with “fixing errors” at all.

When you write a book, your editor may be your closest collaborator. What, exactly, should you ask them to do?

It’s not what you think.

In a recent conversation in the Ezra Klein Show, esteemed magazine editor Adam Moss and New York Times columnist Ezra Klein pithily described editing as “judgment.” 

That is the best description I have heard.

When you pick up a publication like the New York Times or turn on FOX News, you are signing up for the judgment of the people who decide what you should read or watch. When you work with a book editor, you are relying on the judgment of someone who understands books and readers, understands the architecture of story and argument, and has a feel for how to bring out the best in you and your writing.

That “feel” is a funny thing. As Moss says, “editing is a heightened level of sensitivity to any reaction …  you’re just being super sensitive to the way in which your mind is reacting or your heart is reacting. And it’s not just an intellectual thing — it’s also very much an emotional thing.”

When looking for an editor, Moss says, “I listen for confidence, but not too much confidence. I listen for just an interesting mind. Usually, I’ll ask fairly banal questions and see where they take them. I would kind of just keep prodding them to see how the gears of their mind work. …  there needs to be a certain humility in an editor. But also, they need to have a really interesting mind.”

A good book editor, in other words, is a collaborator not simply in your writing, but in your thinking. Especially in your thinking. After all, good writing is a function of good thinking. When you seek a partner to help you make your book (and I include ghostwriters here, too), seek someone who elevates your thinking. That’s how you’ll make a book you’ll be proud of.