dumbfoundry

Slushpile: Tell us what life is like for an editor. What do you do? How much time does it take?

Pitts: I suspect that I’m usually, like most editors, doing something that’s journal related. I may be working on the website one day and then reading submissions the next. Or I may be working on layout, or I may be stopping by the bank, or ordering address labels, or looking at paper samples and weights. It’s so unpredictable. But the journal is always in the back of my mind. If you’re going to start your own journal, the pure editing isn’t going to take you that long. It may take a long time to put together the pieces you want to publish, but it’s going to take a lot longer for you to sit down and fit all that into 48 pages, or 64, or whatever. You’re going to make a lot of changes at that stage, and you’re going to make mistakes, which you’ll have to correct, and you’re going to decide at the last minute that you want a red cover instead of blue, like we did, and those sorts of things. And as soon as that issue comes out you start thinking about the next one, and how it can be better. It’s just a love of language and being able to see an idea become a physical book that you can hold in your hand, and enjoy, that gets to me. Being able to read a poem that you know was good but that you made better is also very satisfying. If you like that kind of feeling, then you should be an editor.

This entry was posted by Ivy on Saturday, July 02, 2005 at 7:01 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.