Notes of a Mad Editor

There is a discipline to this, I tell myself. First read the piece all the way through even if the first page drives you crazy, even if you can’t make sense of it. Sit and read the piece through a few times until you hear the voice of the writer ringing in your head, until you feel that voice might be yours.

Confine yourself to grammatical, typographical and spelling errors. At all costs preserve the author’s voice. Remember, this is not about you. It is about the project this person is writing about. Remember it must be a success story that contributes, indeed builds, the image and credibility of the institution featured in this book. That is the nature of the assignment you accepted.

It seemed simple enough until unforeseen circumstances, no, acts of God, force majeure, my mother used to like to say, took over. When I was ready to begin, my computer died. It took almost two weeks to get a replacement, get that debugged. By then I had lost time and steam. Steam is very important.

Finally I began to read and realized that I should have asked for twice the money. This would take more work than envisioned. No, maybe I should have required everyone to take my writing classes first. No, as I plod on I realize that the problem is far bigger than we. This is not just an editing problem, not a mere language problem. This is an unmitigated social disaster. I can’t edit that.

Why do they say trainings? It’s incorrect. Training refers to the act of transferring knowledge. You cannot count the knowledge transferred in units. You can’t measure it in kilos or pieces. If you cannot break it down into units, you don’t add s. If it will take three meetings for a class to acquire the knowledge, then you say three training sessions or classes or meetings. But you never say trainings.

Wastes is a verb. It is never a noun. Solid waste management does not sort wastes, it manages waste. Waste is a mass of disgusting matter that cannot be broken down into units. Ooops, think Payatas. Think Smoky Mountain all covered up. In the Philippines, waste can be counted in units, ask any scavenger, I hear the writer argue with me. That may be so literally but I am editor waste is correct. While on this subject, please, luggage and baggage have no plural even if you can count three suitcases and a balikabayan box. Let me state that differently. If you say or write luggages or baggages it means you did not go to a school that put you through the drill at least once every quarter and you have no class at all. So don’t do it. Call me snobbish, elitist, class conscious. I don’t care. I am telling you the plural of luggage is luggage, the plural of baggage is baggage. If you add s you are unforgivably ignorant. Don’t argue with me. I am editing this difficult document and I am on the verge of losing it.

There is a discipline to this. You read through until you hear the voice of the writer ringing in your head. You ask him, What are you telling me? I don’t understand what you are saying. You read once, twice, thrice more . Maybe he’s saying . . . but he said that already. Why do we do this? Why do we wrap air in pretty words? Then barquillos comes to mind, stiff pastry rolled around air. And apa, molded wafers with air inside. It must be cultural.

I am editing a book that has to tell stories. I don’t understand many of the storytellers and I have no direct access to them. I draw on my experience in this field. I find the story in the verbiage, edit, rewrite until the piece reads well. Sometimes I’m afraid I turned boring fact into fiction. But I plod on, working myself through the acronyms, the dropped names, the complaints against employers that shouldn’t even be in the pieces and I realize that the superiors of these writers didn’t even read the pieces before they were sent out.

I know I should take a break when I start saying to no one in particular that whoever invented bilingual education should be shot. Whoever lobbied for Pilipino as the medium of instruction should be tried for economic sabotage because now we have a populace that can’t speak, think or write in straight clear English or straight clear Pilipino. We do not have that competitive edge. At break time I sit in imaginary conversation with the person whose work Ijust edited. "Did you see what I did? I had to turn you work upside-down. Tell me, why do you think upside-down? Do you stand on your head?"

My imaginary person smiles and says, "No, Ma’am, but first I think in my dialect according to my circumstance then I translate it into the little English I know. I do my best. My world is small. I don’t have the big picture you ask for. ‘You have to situate the story in the big picture,’ you say to your computer. Ma’am, I am not inside the computer and I cannot see the big picture. To me the story I sent was about my big picture. You have the perspective, you do it."

"But that’s not part of being editor," I protest.

"It is now," he says.

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If you want to go to our village bazaar, it’s on Sunday, 8 a.m. till you drop. Just go to the Shell station at the shortcut to Los Baños that bypasses the Calamba crossing and look for directional streamers that will direct you to the Village Bazaar.

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