by John Stapleton
Grammar Nazis and way worse things
I don’t know about you, but typically when I get a magazine—I skip right past the editor’s page. Only because I
expect it to be the most boring stuff by the most unimaginative grammar Nazi trying to pitch the greatness of
“this latest edition”.
Yawn.
I don’t really consider myself an editor in the classical sense of someone
trying to proofread everyone’s work or chopping text to make the story fit. In
fact, I don’t even consider myself an editor. Maybe, from time to time, I feel
confident enough about myself to say I am a writer—but even that doesn’t
seem real.
Despite all the articles and work I have produced, any time I begin to write,
it feels like I don’t know what I am doing. In many cases, I finish, look at it,
and wonder how the article ended up so long when it took forever just to get
the first sentence down.
As editor, it is the same feeling but worse. Way worse. I don’t know what I
am doing when I try to force it, and maybe that comes across sometimes.
Sometimes I am unable to communicate what my mind envisions and working with
me is probably kind of like getting directions from someone who speaks a different language. However, after
a few late-nights with enough gestures and scribbling on a paper, a form of communication is established.
And then, an understanding occurs—and then, the exciting part—the part where the gestures and scribbles
become unnecessary because the creative forces begin to merge into one, and then a magazine pops out of the
toaster and hot into our hands.