Over at one of my day jobs, I’m the nonfiction editor for the Tahoma Literary Review. I love it to pieces, even if sometimes the work makes my head spin. We read a lot of submissions over there, and we really only get to take a fraction–I do mean a literal fraction–of the work we get. (Over time, it has waffled between five and seven percent for the nonfiction category; in fiction and poetry it’s hovering around one percent.)
I have said this in other places, but I will repeat it here: When I get work from you, I consider it a very big deal. I consider it a gift, in fact. I felt the same when I was editing fiction, but nonfiction carries an added gravitas to me; it’s like we made a bond, the minute you decided to send me your work, because you chose me to tell your story to.
I almost don’t have to say this part, but I want to: When we edit your work, we are doing so because we have think we have found a gem in your piece. There is some other stuff covering it up, so we get out our little excavation brushes and we carefully, gently, work with you to brush some extraneous stuff away. Maybe use some tweezers. So glad we spent all that time playing “Operation” years ago, or in my case, so glad I finally learned to tweeze my eyebrows.
What is this stuff we are editing away, or asking you to add? Sometimes, it’s the language you use to cover up what you really mean. Sometimes, it’s the sweatsuit you put on because you don’t like the lines of your hips. Other times, it’s the TURN LEFT AT ALBUQUERQUE sign you put up for the reader, when really you mean, “Stay with me. Let’s go over here together.”
We are here to help your fine, fine work really sparkle.
Okay. So what is the point of all this? Actually, it’s not the what we do that’s really interesting, it’s the why.
Yesterday, I got an email from a TLR contributor, Chris Arthur. One of his essays, “Glass,” has been listed in the Best American Essays 2016 volume as a “Notable” essay. People, I am chuffed to pieces. I am so pleased for Chris, and proud of the work we did together, and I want to let you know: When you get published? When you feel good about the work we’ve done together? When others recognize the work you’ve done to tell me your story and then polish it to its best possible form?
That’s why we do the work we do. And that’s why, every time something good happens to any TLR contributor, we want to know about it.
(Chris’s wonderful essay is about a blue tit crashing into his window, but it’s about oh, so much more than that. You can read it in TLR’s Vol. 2 No. 2, here.)
