On Editing
One book i’ve revisited lately is the popular, insightful Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samim Nosrat. One of Nosrat’s strongest commandments is to constantly taste while cooking (I’m not at all familiar with cookbooks, so there’s a chance all cooks recommend this). Since every ingredient will taste and feel a little different, like how the stripe pattern on each zebra is different, it’s crucial to taste and adjust seasoning to cook anything.
As I prepared an unscalable mountain of fried rice and eggs this morning, I applied the principle, especially right before plating. This led me down the familiar mental rabbit hole of contemplating the role of editing/revising in excellence.
In school, I had the mixed blessing of understanding basic grammar without much trouble. This meant that my rough drafts for essay assignments looked decently clean, but gave me free reign to procrastinate to the point where I had no time for anything but a rough draft. Craft-wise, I had less practice with the editing, perfecting side of things (or the everything-side of things, with this side being especially apparent).
Towards the end of a student counsel meeting one time in undergrad, the dean said something like this: “You will be more successful in life if you’re able to acknowledge and grow from your mistakes.” I’d gotten pretty good at acknowledging my mistakes (or at least the ones that were apparent to me), but the possibility of growing from them was news. I’d often treated mistakes as evidence of irreparable personal failure, not feedback for improvement. The dean’s insight invited more license for imperfection and engagement in the process. It was also a call to action - I needed to make mistakes as basic evidence of honest engagement.
Alas, I continued to procrastinate school essays, allowing time for proofreading but not enough time to refine the broader scope and content. The dean’s insight had been powerful enough to stick in my memory, but not enough to entirely change my ways (was it even remotely possible for it to have that effect?). After learning more responsibility and coming to appreciate the necessity of strong organization in professional life this past year, I am hopeful that greater maturity will bring with it a greater commitment to the practice of editing.
Could this whole thing be a wordy, meandering take on the idea of “set and measure goals”? Sure. But how much fun would Montaigne be if he always got right to the point (Or does he??)? And how much does life really work that way, unless we sacrifice a significant piece of what life could be?
Do I contradict myself? Yes, I contradict myself!
(n.b. this blog post was proofread but not edited. Much like the other posts).
