On editing

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

How do you feel about editing? It’s a potentially controversial viewpoint, but I love it. I find few things quite so satisfying as taking a piece of text that’s a bit rough around the edges and metaphorically polishing it until it shines. 

 

As a student, I did a summer internship with the editorial team of a large medical journal. I learned a lot whilst I was there. However, the days I enjoyed most were those when I was given a stack of ‘personal view’ articles (~500 words on a topic of the author’s choosing) to sort out. This section of the journal was not commissioned and was made up of comment pieces, submitted on spec by doctors from around the world. It was my task to pick out the gems and see what I could do with the rest. With a bit of tinkering, many went on to be published.

 

A few years later, I edited a longer piece for another publication. Again, my role was to streamline it a bit, reduce the word count, and so on. Suffice it to say, it took me quite a while, so I was a bit taken aback when the author later remarked, ‘oh, I’m so pleased you didn’t have to do much to it!’ I opened my mouth to reply, but decided against it. 

 

Recently, I helped a friend pull together a challenging document and her response to my suggested edits made me reflect again on this process. ‘Wow,’ she said,’ it’s my words, but…!’

 

As Christian writers, we want to share our love for God through our work, but we are heavily reliant on our heavenly ‘editor’ to help us do this. An editor far more skilled than I will ever be. On some days, we may be like the author who didn’t register the (extensive!) changes I’d made to his work. Or my friend who couldn’t quite put her finger on what I’d done with her text. When we write though, we do so for a God who delights in taking the offerings of his children - however meagre - and using them for his glory. In John’s gospel we see Jesus take the five barley loaves and two small fish and feed a crowd (John 6:1-15). The disciples are baffled, but he is not at all phased by the challenge in front of him. He gives thanks for the food, before distributing it until the crowd had eaten as much as they wanted. There were even leftovers. Barley was regarded as animal fodder at the time, so loaves like this would typically only have been eaten by the poor. Yet Jesus could still use them. 

 

God waits to be gracious to us (Isaiah 30:18). To take the little that we have and use it for his bigger purposes.What will you offer him today?

Helen Hewitt lives in southwest London with her husband and two young daughters. Formerly a doctor and clinical academic, she now runs a social enterprise which combines a microbakery and community gardening project (@nourishandgrow_food). Helen is a member of the Community of Hopeweavers.