J. Huffman, Editrix
 
 In between the editing there is something else that only crops up to be talked about in the wee hours of the morning, when the pen is especially heavy, and when the frustrations bunch up into listlessness.  Save the children and perhaps the spouses, I'm going to talk about depression.

Those that know me are aware that I have my own personal demons and I deal with them as best as I am able, often through strangely repetitive cleaning rituals or by pitching a fit and giving everything I own to goodwill and starting over.  But tonight is not about either of those.  

No, Tonight is about the spaces between the words, the darkness that lurks in the places no one looks but me.  It's next to the comma I just deleted and it's all around the sentence I just turned italic.  It's not the writing or the editing that is the issue.  But editing in order to find the dark spaces is what drives me to do it for hours at a time without so much as a break.  It's looking at that darkness, the full, heavy black negative space that the lack of words creates.  That's where I come alive, that is where I am at my best - but it only shows itself in brief, glorious glimpses when I'm in the middle of editing something that may not be it's most entertaining self.  This is where I shine, where I take the blackness and hone it carefully, inserting it cautiously into words and phrases that may not be spectacular before.  Somehow that darkness forms the ideal thing, makes the voice sing or the sentence whole where it could never have been, once.

I imagine depression as a thing.  An entity that I can mold to my own needs even as it molds me to its needs.  It's got claws and fangs and weight and when it's serious, and not even the best writer in the world can drop gentle words to make it flow around and away to elsewhere.

Today seems to be one of those days.  I see the blackness, comfortable in it's depth, more so than I see any words at all, no matter who penned them.  It's insinuated between and betwixt everything I have laid my poor eyes on this evening until nothing is good or right or even sensical.  I don't feel depressed, but I know that I am because the spaces are filled and they're heavy.

How does one fight a heavy?  If it were a boxer you'd punch it in the schnoz a time or two.  If it were a mobster you'd perhaps fit him with cement shoes (sleeeeepin' with the fishes!).  But how do you take a weight that has no substance and do away with it?  Removing it from someone else's words and cleverly hiding it within my own seems to be the best idea of the day.  Just so I can protect the authors that don't have any idea that the spaces that are exposed weigh so much.  To protect those that I love and that which I love to do, I collect it for them and from them and disburse in my own space.  This is me being the hero, don't you feel safe?

Editing has it's days of activity and days of nearly ruinous doubt.  The days of doubt are the days when the spaces are heavy and are ready for me to harvest.  I gather it to myself because only I know, really, what to do with it all.  That bit of darkness goes over there and that teensy bit of weight yonder - but if you do it wrong, the imbalance may cause more chaos.  I'm a champ when it comes to knowing the exact heft of "not enough".  I know the difference between complete blackness and not so complete, and can fill the empty space with just enough to formulate complete.  

I'm very good at it.
1/25/2012 02:05:11 pm

good post

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1/27/2012 11:04:37 am

Great info, thanks

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3/23/2012 04:54:02 am

will return quickly

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3/24/2012 01:46:19 pm

THX for info

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3/30/2012 09:47:21 am

nice post

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3/30/2012 10:44:38 am

Many thanks for information

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    About Jenna:

    I love books.  Deeply, passionately, and above almost all else.  Let me help you by editing your book!  [email protected]