Revealed Scripture
The first principle of editing is equanimity.
Equanimity is a form of love.
Equanimity is a setting-aside of the knowledge of good and evil, and a setting aside of the need to conform all things to oneself. In essence, it is the acceptance of the text which one edits as not inherently in need of editing—which is to say, as not inherently deficient. What the text needs, rather, is love.
Seen with the eye of charity, all language is beautiful. The grammatically botched sentence is beautiful; the narratively botched story is beautiful; the structurally botched essay is beautiful. They are beautiful in the manner of a spider's web, or the leaves that rustle in the wind. They are an intensely complex pattern, which has sprung out of a labyrinth of neurons and their conditioning circumstances, out of the situation of this unique moment of this unique human life. No one can look at a spider's web and fully comprehend the angles and the connections of its threads, or look at the leaves of a tree and fix the shape of each one and its position in their mind. Neither can you comprehend the text that you are editing. Its incomprehensible quality can only be discerned through love; if discerned through love, it is the image of God and a saying from the mouth of God.
To perceive this, even once, is to be blessed beyond measure. Tobias Wolff, in the short story "Bullet In The Brain," has made this clear: how a single utterance of "they is" by a boy on a baseball field, apprehended in light of the heat and light and setting of the moment moment and the brain and the voice and the enunciation by which it emerges, may pierce into the centre of the heart.
No one is justified in editing something that they do not love—no authority is valid except that of love. Neither shall you edit that which you cannot accept. It is easy not to accept a text: there are a million causes for irritation or fear or hatred, or craving or selfish ego, or delusions that the knowledge of good and evil is the foundation of the world. But what is necessary is to love the text as your own self.
You must accept, from the beginning, the text as though you yourself had written it, word for word, exactly as it is now, and you must stand by your work. This principle applies whether you are editing your own work or that of another. It is not easy to be faithful: there is no guarantee that others will accept what you accept. You must accept this lack of acceptance. That is part of equanimity.
Perhaps you believe that equanimity is not the skillful means appropriate to that which one is editing. Perhaps, in this case, the text really does cry out not to be accepted, not to be treated as sufficient. You may be right. I will believe you if you speak from a place of genuine knowledge, of genuine authority. I will believe you if you have come to this conclusion through your dutiful attention to the text. Such attention can only be loving attention. And to lovingly attend, you must first accept the object of your love.
This step may be beyond your capacities in a certain case. I certainly cannot always muster it. If so, there is an alternative which is no less loving: that which you cannot judge rightly, you may choose not to judge at all.
Having accepted that the text requires no edits, you are now at liberty to edit it.
But how shall you possibly edit what does not require editing?
One begins, very simply, with attention, not only to the text, but to yourself. It is not enough merely to love the text: you must apply your whole being to loving the text, and so you must attend to your whole being. Here, again, one requires equanimity. The texts may appear to you, at some points, to cause you to stumble. Perhaps you trip on its grammar or its orthography, or some argument does not convince you, or some digression seems unmerited, or some plot point is not well-developed. It is okay that you feel this way, and it is okay that the text has made you feel this way. To accept the text does not mean to reject your reading of it as deficient if it features notes of confusion, suffering, or disorientation.
Likewise, it is okay to feel the many forms of joy and enthusiasm that a text can evoke. Likewise, it is okay to feel joy and enthusiasm about a form that the text seems like it could have, but as yet does not. Likewise, it is okay to feel joy and enthusiasm about something which seems to be emerging from the text, but which is as yet obscure and subterranean.
Take stock of all the affects the text evokes: it may be helpful to refer to Spinoza’s catalogue of the passions in Part III of The Ethics, and perhaps also the various structures of thought in Part II. Accept that which arises: suffering and joy, love and hatred, wonder, awe, and terror, reverence, disgust; the various imaginations, rational deductions, and intuitions. These impressions play out on microcosmic and macrocosmic scales within the text, from the letters to the broadest themes, yet the method is the same between them. “As above, so below” is not always true, but it is true here.
The purpose of the attentive reading, as oriented toward editing, is the preparation of a gift. One has by received the text to be edited as a gift to begin with, and now one is preparing a gift in kind. There are many stories of bodhisattvas giving away parts of their body to beggars: giving away their arms, their legs, their organs, even their heads. You are preparing to give away your heart, your mind, and the breath in your lungs.
Do not worry too much if this task seems overwhelming because of how I have worded it. The principle at play here remains that of equanimity. If my idiom becomes a burden for you, throw it away, it is not intended to be. The basic matter boils down to this: accept to attend to the text as it is, and accept to attend to your reactions as they are.
The process of editing resembles a marriage. The flesh of one’s reading must be united with the flesh of that which one has read. Like a wedding, this is not a task to be undertaken lightly.
There is first of all the question of whether one’s reading is suitable to be wed with the text in the first place. Here there may be divergence on different scales: my orthography and grammar may be applicable, but not my structural analysis; my structural analysis may be applicable, but not my orthography and grammar. There is no harm in refusing to marry two partners who obviously do not suit one another, and it does not imply that one or both of them are deficient. Sometimes, it simply is not prudent to go forward with the process.
If one does translate one’s reading into edits, there is still a question of accommodation. First, the reading of the editor must be translated into the format of a list of suggestions. Then, in collaboration with the author (who may well be yourself), these suggestions are either taken, rejected, or modified. Even if they are rejected, however, the edit is still applied. The status quo no longer exists as it does before: it exists in relation to the edit that was rejected, and the role of that spelling, phrasing, or expression within the context of the broader piece as it continues to develop has changed. The reading of the editor is not only partially married to the writing of the author—they are thoroughly joined together, and now forever indivisible.
The editor is not merely involved with the edited piece. The editor is involved with the piece they originally accepted, and they must continue to accept it even now that it has been edited. It is not with the edited piece that they have joined their being, but with the original piece. If they resent the original but accept the edited, then in fact they have not edited at all: they have insisted on their own way, destroying the original piece and creating a new piece according to their own desires. But love creates a creature which is at once one and multiple.
The gift of editing is the manner in which one receives what one accepts. The text, as you have accepted it, is given to you, and you are given to it like an olive branch grafted onto another tree. If what one has accepted is that the text is deficient, one is grafted into that which one understands by deficiency, and if one has accepted that the text is sufficient, one is grafted into that which one understands by sufficiency. But another tree is available, the tree upon which is the fruit of life, by which all text appears like so:
Knowledge is too wondrous for me—
high above, I cannot attain it—
for where can I go from your spirit,
and where from before you flee?