On June 1, John Grant wrote an insightful thought on the perils of a T.J. Monkey’s writer facing the editing process. He raised a very good point. He brought up a couple of dull surfaces as well, but as anyone who’s ever thrown pencils at the ceiling knows, it’s the points that stick. Writers who sends in thoughts to the site submit themselves to the harsh figurative pen-that-would-actually-be-a-keyboard-in-today’s-hi-tech-age of the editor. Perhaps even this thought will be affected. In writing this I have written a brilliant and hysterical opening paragraph that in no way contains a lame pun or a phrase that’s unnecessarily strung together with hyphens. If you see anything like that, I assure you it was the editor.
But there’s another side to John’s thought, and it’s a side to the story that I’ve wanted to write about ever since John’s thought aired. Then of course I realized that there was a new Go-Gos album out and then a month of my life just goes out the window. You know how it is. So I apologize, and I can only hope that I won’t be “Unforgiven.”
The truth of the editor is that he works both ways. John graduated from Duke University and is all sorts of smart and he can write thoughts like the History of War series to demonstrate his brilliance. It’s understandable that any editing would hurt his thoughts. I’m not smart. I’m a religion major. If you spend every Sunday morning of your life trying to figure something out and then have to go and take classes on the subject, you’re not the brightest star in the Christmas Pageant. Consequently, my thoughts have benefited greatly from a little editing.
For example, “On My Future Occupation as a Ho,” the first thought I wrote, was originally titled “On My Future Occupation as a Hoe,” and it was all about the wonderful life I would lead someday on a farm. Instead of introducing my love affair for Belinda Carlisle, I wrote fondly of my idol Arlo Guthrie and how his name was often useful in crosswords.
A revolutionary change was made to my thought “On Fighting Heredity” which was originally titled “On Fighting Herod: A Ditty.” It was a delightful little tune set in Biblical times.
“On a Hairy Future” was of course first titled “On a Hare: E-future.” An insightful article that I had first planned to write for “Wired” magazine where I presented a Luddite perspective on the future of communication, using the old Tortoise and Hare fable to predict the “slow-and-steady” victory of the postal system over email.
“On Procrastination” was actually just an apologetic email to Porter for not having written anything in a while.
And even my opus “On My Quest to be Cool,”–which at the time of writing this holds the #1 spot on the Top-Ten list–was actually an email I meant to send to my doctor, explaining just how I managed to get frostbite on my loins.
If you still wish to blame the editor, I can’t stop you. Let he who has never spell-checked cast the first stone.