Editing as spectator sport

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By Steven W. Beattie
June 24, 2009
2:00 PM

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Uh-oh. Is it just us, or does this sound like a potentially perilous idea? Brian Joseph Davis, writing in The Globe and Mail‘s In Other Words blog, points to an event taking place on July 4 at Toronto’s Scream in High Park, in which a panel of editors, including Stuart Ross and Coach House Books’ Alana Wilcox, will each take a crack at editing a piece of writing by a “well regarded” anonymous author. Live. In real time.

Writes Davis:

Edits will be compared. An identity will be revealed and hopefully feelings will be hurt just enough for it to be funny, but not so much for the scars to be permanent.

This experiment might result in a pleasant conversation between colleagues, or the literary equivalent of a UFC cage match. Quillblog is now torn: while abhorring confrontation, the latter outcome sounds much more entertaining.

Kaolin Fire (GUD Magazine)

So long as it’s all consenting adults involved, and they all remember they’re consenting adults, hopefully it will be good spectacle. :)
John

Like all dutiful Canlit editors, they’ll take something good and turn it into something they perceive that the market desires, but do it badly.
Wayne

An editing UFC cage match? Gives new meaning to the term “tap out.”
Canlit editor

Like all dutiful Canlit editors, they’ll turn something good into what they perceive the market desires, but they’ll do it badly.
Jane

ha ha–nice.
Stuart Ross

Dangling modifier in the last sentence of the article.

Stu

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