by Matthew Burkhalter
After graduating from the University of the South, I worked for a year as the Conrad Aiken-K. P. A Taylor Intern (read: copy editor) at the Sewanee Review, the literary quarterly published by the university. The editor during the 2010–11 academic year was George Core; he had edited the journal every academic year since 1973 and would not retire until 2014. An unapologetic traditionalist and a grandee in the world of southern letters, Mr. Core was (and remains) worthy of respect and fear in equal measure—or, more precisely, respect from judicious readers and fear from writers. The poet Donald Hall, a frequent contributor to the SR, eloquently described the professional writer’s trepidation in the face of Mr. Core’s formidable editorial standards:
“Writers tremble to submit to the Sewanee Review, for fear that the editor may discover them in a solecism. For this reason, the bravest will send their work to Sewanee, finding editorial severity preferable to . . . perpetuated error. It is the most edited of American quarterlies.” [1]
—Donald Hall, poet
Indeed, once Mr. Core conferred upon an unsolicited manuscript the rare distinction of acceptance and publication, the copy editor knew to commence with sharpening his red pencils; the crooked would soon be made straight and the rough places plain.
Working in this environment made me an eagle-eyed copy editor and a much better writer. (Balderdash was Mr. Core’s description of my prose in a senior paper I wrote on Flannery O’Connor; three years later, he accepted and published my review of a book on Nazi aesthetics.) Working at the SR did not make me a good writing coach, as I learned while serving as a TA during my first year in graduate school.
Academics and professional writers grow accustomed to having their work fitted to an array of editorial specifications. College freshmen are not so acclimated, and I can affirm that they infrequently recognize the distinctions among hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes. As Joseph N. Williams has observed, the reader on the hunt for, as opposed to merely happening upon, such errors is likely to find them.[2] This nitpicking can lead to forms of operational exhaustion observable only in academia; I have found myself at 2:00 AM, after having slashed and burned my way through a stack of 50 papers, “clinging” to a student writer’s correct usage of a semicolon “as a monk might have clung to his copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History when the Vikings sacked the abbey.”[3] In short, I learned the hard way that the mere absence of error is not the only bellwether of good writing, especially when the nineteen-year-old author’s greatest sin is probably not having left himself enough time to edit and proofread.
As a writing coach, one learns to tame the inner copy editor and to put down the red pencil. Like a contractor surveying a gut job, the writing coach must see possibilities rather than problems.
Like a contractor surveying a gut job, the writing coach must see possibilities rather than problems.
I have found that keeping in mind a hierarchy of problems is one of the best ways to accomplish this. Recognizing that all errors are not of equal importance (or, after a point, even noticeable as errors) can be difficult for someone practiced in the Procrustean activity of fitting any writer’s prose to a certain house style. Yet even the severest editor must admit that a quotation dropped without preamble into the middle of a paragraph is a bigger problem than occasional passive voice. An unclear argument and jumbled organization are greater than both.
Typing comments in the form of a letter to a breathing author, rather than scribbling notes at the bottom of a dead 5–6-page entity awaiting correction, also helps to impart a sense of scale. Rather than getting buried in the nuts and bolts of misplaced modifiers and shifting tenses, one must sit with the paper for a few minutes and formulate a strategic response. One must weigh problems large and small and, even more importantly, address how those weaknesses might be improved.
The Writing Intensive Program’s greatest strength is that it reveals something that previously seemed static to be fluid. In writing-intensive courses, students’ papers are not fixed entities but, refreshingly, developing works.
The Writing Intensive Program’s
greatest strength is that it reveals something that previously seemed static to
be fluid. In writing-intensive courses, students’ papers are not fixed entities
but, refreshingly, developing works. Allocating time for drafts, peer review,
and conferences, apart from their immediate benefits to argumentation and
style, suggests to students that writing is a process. It is a process through
which I hope to guide novice authors; it is a process they should take
seriously. I don’t want them to tremble to submit their work.
[1] “Homage to George Core: Essays and Notes in Honor of His Retirement,” Sewanee Review 124, no. 4 (Fall 2016), 550.
[2] Joseph N. Williams, “The Phenomenology of Error,” College Composition and Communication 32, no. 2 (May 1981), 152–168.
[3] Dominic Green, “Puttin’ on the Style,” The New Criterion 36, no. 6 (February 2018), 18.