Once Chloe hit the 6-month mark, I found myself feeling a little restless for some intellectual stimulation beyond the baby-talk and everyday chores of being a stay-at-home mom. Make no mistake, being at home with a baby is a lot of work and it wasn't that I was bored because I didn't have enough to do. Yet I wanted to have something that was not mothering-related and something that would reclaim that sense of just being me-as-me and not me-as-mom or me-as-wife. Those of you who know me know that I am a bit of a nerd (and a grammar nazi), and so I thought it would be great to do something writing-related. I am not much of a creative writer, but I enjoy academic writing, and my sister suggested I post an ad on kijiji/craigslist for academic editing services. I didn't even know such services existed and that people looked for them, but sure enough, they do!
Two and a half years later, I've edited over 200 projects, big and small. The topics have run the gamut, from engineering papers on constructing bridges to comparative analyses of two novels to admission essays for school, and many many things in between. There have been some really bad essays with grammars that is wrong (that was on purpose, guys), as well as essays that have all the right content but present ideas in a mishmash that go from Point A to D then B and back to A. My job each time is to work with what is given and clean it up, organize it, and make it into a piece of writing that a reader can understand and take something away from.
I know for many of you, essay writing probably sounds like something you are thankful you never have to do again once you finish school, but I can say that I sincerely love it. At least I love the editing part of it. The researching and writing part can be tedious (which is why I don't do that for any of my clients. Plus it would be cheating! Strictly editing only!) but the process of taking a messy, incoherent piece of writing and making it into something that sounds intelligent and makes the main message(s) of the writer clear -- I get such satisfaction from it. I've also learned about so many interesting topics along the way that I most likely would never come across in my everyday life or in the field I've majored in.
The whole process also makes me think of God, who is occasionally called "the Author" but whom I'd like to give the moniker "the Ultimate Editor". He gives us the free will to write out the story of our lives for the most part -- we can make decisions about the characters we want to include, the tone of the story, the details of what happens when, and so forth. Sure, there are many things we cannot control in our story either and parameters we have to work within, but we can decide on a great deal of the content ourselves and decide how to arrange the sequence of events. And I think that often, our lives turn out to be a mishmash of good and bad decisions, of small and big errors, and a confusion of points. When we let the Editor do his work though, we are better able to see the logical structure in it and the main message that the story is intended to tell. It'll make a lot more sense!
