The easiest thing to do is to judge others, but amongst the most difficult is to judge them responsibly. A person who works as an editor should surely be more conscious of this fact than anybody else. For an editor is empowered — to pass a judgment on another person’s piece of work; to wield her pen as decisively as a sword. Unfortunately, more often than not, if something doesn’t fit into our expected parameters, we are quick to reject and castigate it.
We have new recruits in the editorial department. One of them, a young man with some experience of having worked in a large daily, apparently intelligent, looked at the first script he got and within minutes trashed it. He did it with so much conviction, for a moment even i started doubting the script, though i had cleared it myself. When we sat down to discuss it, his biggest grievance was that the author wasn’t saying anything new. Only when he was made to understand that the author didn’t mean to write anything new since his aim was to provide a general overview on the subject, did he change his opinion. To his credit, he did understand the difference between his expectation and the author’s motive.
The question to be asked here is — is it necessary for an author to fit into your parameter? Or should your parameter itself be expanded to at least empathise, if not justify the author’s stance?
No wonders, best editors are the ones who themselves grow and evolve with each script they edit. The young man, I hope, like others who are a part of Wisdom Tree, is on course to be one of them.
