Editing Issues

Editing issues can be painstaking. It can be hard. It can make you cry, and wish that the submitter could come up with better ideas (or at least better spelling). But most of the time it's just plain arduous.

Picture the scene:

Here I am, hunched at my computer, I've been going through the list of submitted issues for a stolid hour and my eyeballs have turned pink with the strain. So far the list has not yielded a single issue worth editing. Then suddenly something interesting turns up - I dare not blink lest it all happen to be some kind of dream (though this would be improbable - last night I dreamt I was playing ping-pong with an Australian janitor in a leisure centre which is situated next to the world's largest pillow (I swear to God I did! I was quite bewildered when I woke up. The pillow was pretty huge, though, and I admit I was impressed. Even if it did appear to be a direct rip-off of the dull green-striped one I have.). Something as mundane as an editable issue is probably not going to feature too heavily. But there it is: an issue which isn't like all the other travesties. It may not shine, but at least it glimmers with some kind of dusted dignity.

Then the editing begins.

Editing can be difficult because there are so many things needing to be balanced - obvious ones include political and economic biases, argument emphasis, and all the rest. Less obvious ones include certain statistical adjustments (which shall remain secret, mwahaha), option lengths, previous issue statistics, previous issue ideas, a whole spreadsheet of brain-numbing number analyses, and, oh God, so many more. Editing a single issue can take as little as an hour to as long as a week (or even longer) depending on time constraints, my mood, how well the issue had been written before I touched it (not many issues start off being written well. The best issue writers I've noted have been Mirkai and Frigben.) and how much feedback on my drafts I can squeeze out of the other mods, who pretend they're not around when they see I'm about to interrogate/discuss an issue with them for the next half-hour.

But when that's all done, I can get down to the second editing session, which is basically pruning and adding. What is necessary, and what is not? It's at this time that I add little puns and references to current events and things. I sometimes get telegrams from people who've spotted them. Typically, most people just skim issues and then go with whatever option takes their fancy. Some people pore over them like a mother reading her daughter's diary. And a very small number think about what they've read in any great detail. F'r instance, a few people have noticed I stick the name 'Catherine Gratwick' in some of my issues, though no-one's figured out why yet.

When I've done that, the issue goes through a final slash-and-burn, usually with much discussion on the mods' part, and then goes into the game. And then I realise that I've forgotten to correct a typo or put in a quotation mark and I roll my eyes with irritation. Given Sal and [violet]'s constant beavering away at their various projects, it can take an ice age for them to get to that part of the to-do list which says "fix that list of typos that Sirocco's being going on about for the last two months".

That's what the state of affairs is right now, anyway. They'll get fixed someday, I manage to drag myself in front of my largely repetitive inbox everyday because I believe it. But for now, I've got to get a move on with issue #178...