{"id":624,"date":"2016-08-17T12:50:42","date_gmt":"2016-08-17T17:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/?p=624"},"modified":"2016-07-26T06:33:56","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T11:33:56","slug":"on-empathy-in-editing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/2016\/08\/17\/on-empathy-in-editing\/","title":{"rendered":"On Empathy in Editing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Archived from its original publication at http:\/\/hortulus-journal.com\/2015\/06\/06\/digital-publishing-column-yvonne-seale-on-empathy-in-editing\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Detail<\/a>
Detail of a miniature of Christine de Pizan presenting her book to Charles VI. BL Harley 4431 f. 178. [Source<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You\u2019d perhaps expect to learn a great deal about the craft of writing when working as the editor of a journal like Hortulus<\/em>. It\u2019s true. I learned to wrangle wayward apostrophes, to figure out where an argument needed to be shored up with a contextualizing paragraph, and the tricky art of unearthing topic sentences from where they\u2019ve been buried mid-paragraph. But what I didn\u2019t expect to learn was something more profound: that you are not what you write.<\/p>\n

Getting to grips with the mechanical aspects of editing is an important thing for any aspiring academic to learn, one which benefits both the article on which you\u2019re working and, ultimately, your own writing. I know from my experiences as an editor and as a peer reviewer that figuring out how to phrase the suggestions you want to make to an author, thinking through how to articulate a hunch you have about why that paragraph needs to be moved there, can help you to truly internalize writing rules you\u2019ve been hearing for a long time. It may be an old adage, but it\u2019s a true one\u2014you only really understand something if you can explain it to someone else.<\/p>\n

Yet this is not the most valuable aspect of the editorial experience. That lies in the way that working with someone else\u2019s prose can change your own relationship with your writing. One of the most difficult things for a budding medievalist to learn in graduate school\u2014or at least so it was for me\u2014isn\u2019t getting to grips with paleography, or the myriad uses of the Latin ablative, or even how to get through a lengthy comps exam reading list with relative speed. (Though each of these things carry their own special brand of frustration.) The most important thing is learning that you are not your work.<\/p>\n

I know that may sound a little corny, and as the product of a stolid Irish farming family, I resisted fully understanding the maxim for quite some time. I was raised to believe that if something\u2019s worth doing, it\u2019s worth doing right, and that you should take pride in a job well done. There\u2019s nothing inherently wrong with those ideas, but I think that how I internalized them led me to confuse the end-product with the process. Looking back at my undergraduate career, and even my time as a Master\u2019s student, I can now see how that confusion led to a lot of stress, frustration, and anxiety. It\u2019s possible to make a sincere effort with a paper or an article, to do the best you can with the information that you have, and still end up with a piece of work that doesn\u2019t entirely do what you want it to do. And yet the most difficult thing turns out to be not looking at that draft that\u2019s not what it should be, and figuring out how it needs to be fixed; it\u2019s realizing that producing an imperfect draft isn\u2019t a measure of your ability as a scholar.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>
Detail of a miniature of Vincent of Beauvais, a Dominican friar, writing at his desk. BL Royal 14 E I f. 3. [Source<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What gives you a far better sense of your measure as a scholar is your ability to adapt your writing, to see the potential in your work, and to make something better of it. Working as an editor provides you with a good object lesson in the truth of this. Once an article has been accepted by a journal, an editor doesn\u2019t work with just one version of it. At least during my stint at Hortulus<\/em>, I got to see multiple versions of the same work: the original version (which was of course often itself the final iteration of many months of work), which I read through with an eye to identifying appropriate peer reviewers; the annotated versions which the reviewers return, marked up with what excited them or what they felt lacking; and then the revised version which the author returns, incorporating the reviewers\u2019 suggestions. This version then goes through another round of line and structural edits before it\u2019s ready for publication. The process allows you to see people making critiques, and then others taking those critiques and doing something with them\u2014to see not just the polished final version, but also the various revisions of it along the way.<\/p>\n

Getting to observe this process at a remove helps to break down some of the fear that there are other scholars out there\u2014the nebulous \u201cgood ones\u201d\u2014who are able to produce perfect work without so much as a bead of sweat dampening their brow. When you get a seminar paper or a dissertation chapter back from an advisor and it\u2019s liberally annotated with suggestions for further readings, queries about the framing of your argument, or even the occasional inscrutable \u2018???\u2019, it is in no way proof that you are less good than other graduate students, or that you are not working as hard as your peers. Critique is just one step in the process, one that will hopefully let you see the potential in your work.<\/p>\n

Working as an editor also makes you see that you have something to offer as a scholar, that you have amassed a body of knowledge on your area of study on which you can draw. The work that you put into structuring the historiographical section of your master\u2019s thesis\u2014you can draw on that to provide advice to someone who\u2019s struggling to make the framework of their article cohere. All that reading you did for your comps exams\u2014that lets you come up with a reference to a journal article that will help to bolster the point that the author has made. As graduate students, there\u2019s still so much for us to learn about the craft of being a historian or a literary scholar, but it\u2019s not self-important for us to recognize that our own work is built upon a steadily expanding knowledge base.<\/p>\n

\"BL,<\/a>
BL, MS Harley 2850, fol. 47v. St Bridget of Sweden is shown writing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet equally, to be a diligent editor also requires a recognition of the fallibility of critique, of the fact that those who review work are not omniscient. Their assessment may be wrong; they may want the author to have written a completely different manuscript. I know that when I edit something, I do so out of a sincere desire to help someone improve their work and the belief that my suggestions will help the author to do so. However, I don\u2019t presume to think that my advice is always right just because it\u2019s well-intentioned, nor am I so na\u00efve as to think that all peer reviewers are working from the same good motivations. Having to critique others\u2019 work has helped make it much clearer for me, that the critique which I receive on my work is something to be taken seriously and thoughtfully, but also as counsel rather than a final judgment.<\/p>\n

Part of being a good editor is treating another\u2019s work with empathy, mindful of the labor that has been put into it so far and looking always for its potential\u2014and when you learn to do that with a colleague\u2019s work, you learn to do the same with your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archived from its original publication at http:\/\/hortulus-journal.com\/2015\/06\/06\/digital-publishing-column-yvonne-seale-on-empathy-in-editing\/ You\u2019d perhaps expect to learn a great deal about the craft of writing when working as the editor …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-resources"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":176,"url":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/2015\/12\/06\/roundup2015\/","url_meta":{"origin":624,"position":0},"title":"Publication Roundup II","author":"Yvonne Seale","date":"December 6, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"[Header image: Paris, Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France, MS Fr. 1728] Two things to link to briefly: \"On Empathy in Editing\", Guest Column, Hortulus: the Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies, June 6, 2015. [Read online] This column was partly inspired by my experience as a guest editor with Hortulus. Review\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Publications"","block_context":{"text":"Publications","link":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/category\/publications\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/proxycaqqt21x-e1446407180605.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/proxycaqqt21x-e1446407180605.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/proxycaqqt21x-e1446407180605.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/proxycaqqt21x-e1446407180605.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/proxycaqqt21x-e1446407180605.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3106,"url":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/2023\/01\/08\/marie-was-never-a-nuisance\/","url_meta":{"origin":624,"position":1},"title":"Marie Was Never a Nuisance","author":"admin","date":"January 8, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"This post was originally a thread which I posted on Twitter in March 2019, in response to a meme which was being widely linked to on social media during that time. Since Twitter\u2019s long-term resilience is far from assured, and since the \"Marie the Nuisance\" image is still being presented\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Medievalism"","block_context":{"text":"Medievalism","link":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/category\/medievalism\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Screenshot-2023-01-08-at-15.14.00.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Screenshot-2023-01-08-at-15.14.00.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Screenshot-2023-01-08-at-15.14.00.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Screenshot-2023-01-08-at-15.14.00.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Screenshot-2023-01-08-at-15.14.00.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2013,"url":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/25\/teaching-abelard-and-heloise\/","url_meta":{"origin":624,"position":2},"title":"Teaching Ab\u00e9lard and H\u00e9lo\u00efse","author":"admin","date":"November 25, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"One of 2018's wearying inevitabilities is that even the most cursory glance at the news is likely to bring you a fresh tale of sexual assault\u2014and that much of the resulting commentary is bound to be almost as jarring as the news article itself. 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On “Feisty, Cheeky, and Rebellious” Women in History","author":"admin","date":"May 6, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In yesterday's Guardian newspaper, reviewer Mark Lawson called for the makers of television programmes to \"stop horrendously airbrushing history\", to \"stop the madness\" of producing period dramas featuring \"characters with laughably liberal values for their day.\" Lawson was responding particularly to Jamestown, a new series focusing on a group of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Women's History"","block_context":{"text":"Women's History","link":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/category\/womens-history\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/msdouce195_111v.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/msdouce195_111v.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/msdouce195_111v.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/msdouce195_111v.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/msdouce195_111v.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/msdouce195_111v.jpeg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/SHORPY-06634u.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}