I’m taking a copyediting class. It’s really fascinating, provided you’re really into things like comma placement. (Look, I never made any promises about not being a geek!) Last night, our instructor concluded with a quotation, which I found so wonderful I felt compelled to share it. It’s from editor and autobiographer (“whatever that means!” interjected our teacher) Margaret Anderson:
I was born to be an editor, I always edit everything. I edit my room at least once a week. Hotels are made for me. I can change a hotel room so thoroughly that even its proprietor doesn't recognize it . . .. I edit people's clothes, dressing them infallibly in the right lines . . .. I change everyone's coiffure—except those that please me—and these I gaze at with such satisfaction that I become suspect, I edit people's tones of voice, their laughter, their words. I change their gestures, their photographs. I change the books I read, the music I hear . . . It's this incessant, unavoidable observation, this need to distinguish and impose, that has made me an editor. I can't make things. I can only revise what has been made. [sic]
Do you constantly revise and rewrite the world around you?
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