How being a librarian helps with editing-
Jul. 15th, 2011 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mary_j_59Or, a post on weeds and weeding.
I've been weeding the teen nonfiction - not one of my favorite tasks, but very necessary - and also going through the line edits Jessica Spotswood sent me. And it occurred to me that there are some similarities in going through a book collection and going through a text. Not to speak of actually weeding a garden!
Weeding's a process a lot of non-librarians don't understand too well. Why on earth would a library ever get rid of books (or other media)? There are several reasons why we do this.
First, maybe the book needs replacing. Perhaps it was lovingly read while a child was blowing bubbles or eating an ice cream cone. Seriously, I have come across books with pages stuck together by gum! In that case, there's nothing wrong with the book itself. We just need a new copy.
Second, and this is easiest to see with nonfiction, it's possible a good book is out of date and thus no longer useful. Perhaps there's been new research (as with the discovery that many modern humans actually do have Neanderthal genes) that renders the book obsolete. Then you have to get rid of it and find a newer, more accurate book on the same subject. If we didn't update our collections, we'd still have books claiming that the U.S. had 48 states and that humans had never been to the moon. Obviously, that wouldn't be acceptable.(Note: Of course it's important to preserve history, including the history of knowledge. But you always have limited space. More on this below.)
Or maybe you already have several books on the topic in question. The others are more attractive and better used. Then you may need to withdraw the title that isn't being read, leaving the ones that are more useful.
This brings me to the final point - how weeding a book collection actually is like weeding a garden. In our community plot, one of the most common weeds is (drumroll) the beautiful and valuable milkweed, AKA butterfly bush. It comes up EVERYWHERE! When my sister and I see it, we try to replant it, if we can. We want to preserve it for the monarch butterflies. But - it can't sit in the middle of our garden plot. We just don't have enough room.
Thus, books (and words) may be good and useful, in their place. But - is THIS their place? If not, we have to find another place for them.
And - the thing about weeding a collection is that it really does make it more attractive to library patrons. People come to the library for several reasons, but one thing they want to see is bright, shiny new materials. Weeding properly makes these new books and movies more visible and thus more attractive.
So how does all this apply to learning to edit? If you think of your story as a "library" of words, you can ask yourself these questions.
1. Is this word (or phrase, or scene, character, paragraph) a worn-out cliche? If so, can you think of another word (scene, etc) that will do the same job better?
2. Are your words as sharp and accurate as they can be? If not, how can you hone them so that they convey precisely what you mean?
3. Maybe you have some beautiful language and images in your text. But do you really need them in this story? If you do, are they in the right place?
Of course, there's a lot more to the editing process than this! But, just as every book in a library ought to have its reader (famous Indian librarian Ranganathan), so every word in a story should help to carry the story forward. If the words aren't doing their job, or aren't doing it well enough, or are doing the wrong job, they have to go. Yes, that's obvious, isn't it? That doesn't make it easy to do; I'm not awfully fond of weeding, and, when you're looking at your own text, it's terribly difficult to be objective. But I understand how necessary it is.
Just a thought! Have a good weekend, everyone.
I've been weeding the teen nonfiction - not one of my favorite tasks, but very necessary - and also going through the line edits Jessica Spotswood sent me. And it occurred to me that there are some similarities in going through a book collection and going through a text. Not to speak of actually weeding a garden!
Weeding's a process a lot of non-librarians don't understand too well. Why on earth would a library ever get rid of books (or other media)? There are several reasons why we do this.
First, maybe the book needs replacing. Perhaps it was lovingly read while a child was blowing bubbles or eating an ice cream cone. Seriously, I have come across books with pages stuck together by gum! In that case, there's nothing wrong with the book itself. We just need a new copy.
Second, and this is easiest to see with nonfiction, it's possible a good book is out of date and thus no longer useful. Perhaps there's been new research (as with the discovery that many modern humans actually do have Neanderthal genes) that renders the book obsolete. Then you have to get rid of it and find a newer, more accurate book on the same subject. If we didn't update our collections, we'd still have books claiming that the U.S. had 48 states and that humans had never been to the moon. Obviously, that wouldn't be acceptable.(Note: Of course it's important to preserve history, including the history of knowledge. But you always have limited space. More on this below.)
Or maybe you already have several books on the topic in question. The others are more attractive and better used. Then you may need to withdraw the title that isn't being read, leaving the ones that are more useful.
This brings me to the final point - how weeding a book collection actually is like weeding a garden. In our community plot, one of the most common weeds is (drumroll) the beautiful and valuable milkweed, AKA butterfly bush. It comes up EVERYWHERE! When my sister and I see it, we try to replant it, if we can. We want to preserve it for the monarch butterflies. But - it can't sit in the middle of our garden plot. We just don't have enough room.
Thus, books (and words) may be good and useful, in their place. But - is THIS their place? If not, we have to find another place for them.
And - the thing about weeding a collection is that it really does make it more attractive to library patrons. People come to the library for several reasons, but one thing they want to see is bright, shiny new materials. Weeding properly makes these new books and movies more visible and thus more attractive.
So how does all this apply to learning to edit? If you think of your story as a "library" of words, you can ask yourself these questions.
1. Is this word (or phrase, or scene, character, paragraph) a worn-out cliche? If so, can you think of another word (scene, etc) that will do the same job better?
2. Are your words as sharp and accurate as they can be? If not, how can you hone them so that they convey precisely what you mean?
3. Maybe you have some beautiful language and images in your text. But do you really need them in this story? If you do, are they in the right place?
Of course, there's a lot more to the editing process than this! But, just as every book in a library ought to have its reader (famous Indian librarian Ranganathan), so every word in a story should help to carry the story forward. If the words aren't doing their job, or aren't doing it well enough, or are doing the wrong job, they have to go. Yes, that's obvious, isn't it? That doesn't make it easy to do; I'm not awfully fond of weeding, and, when you're looking at your own text, it's terribly difficult to be objective. But I understand how necessary it is.
Just a thought! Have a good weekend, everyone.