What Editors Do For Fun: Write Children's Books

Usable, What Editors Do For Fun

Guest writer: Isabel Anders

“Editing and writing walk together, and they both require the eye and the ear.” —Found in the New Yorker (3/27/23). 

Isabel

It never failed. Every time I typed my name, Isabel, the spell-check function on my old computer would change it to “usable.” I laughed, but there was a kind of logic to it. 

Eventually, it accepted my name as a valid entry rather than a typo. If you stick around long enough, you get written into the story. 

“Editors and their input are inconspicuous by design. … Editors work in service of their authors and are the invisible shepherds (or packhorses or midwives, pick your metaphor) of the books we read,” wrote Sara B. Franklin.

My primary vocation as an editor has suited me perfectly—requiring accuracy, diligence, solitude—and allowing a degree of independence as one works on a manuscript. If only life were like that—a page spread out with identifiable bumps (errors) and cracks (omissions) that could, at one time, be “fixed” by an editorial pencil—but now succumb to the electronic delete key that wipes away mistakes completely. 

An editor’s work actually should be invisible, causing a piece to read and flow as though it had been written that way from the beginning. Injecting one’s own personal style is not the function of a responsible editor who serves the work. 

Since I have written books myself on the side, I truly appreciated other editors who performed that useful function for me—because, as they say, “everyone needs an editor.”

Perhaps workers in any helping profession can easily relate to this need for focus: “Attention,” the psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist writes, “is a moral act: It creates, brings aspects of things into being.” Those of us who are usable in some way are privileged to have a hand (though often an invisible one) in the process.

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” in this life, we’re told in Ecclesiastes 9:10. It’s likely when the scroll of life’s story rolls out complete, editors will not be needed. 

Isabel Anders’ Mother Bilbee Tales is a collection of nursery rhymes and folktales with a twist that allows her editorial spirit to have a fun ride.

Sing a Song of Six Birds and several others are available on Amazon.

Examen at Night

Schmidt: Ignatius, Examen

Guest Writer Frederick W. Schmidt

“The Examen builds on the insight that it’s easier to see God in retrospect rather than in the moment.”—James Martin in The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life (HarperOne, 2010), p. 97.

“Rummaging for God” in our lives.

One of the central practices in Jesuit devotion—the one Ignatius of Loyola considered indispensable—was the prayer of Examen. Ignatius believed that the key to spiritual growth was cultivating awareness of when and where God had been present throughout the day. It was so important, in fact, that he urged his followers to do the Examen, even if it cost them the little time they might have for prayer. 

One writer refers to this as “rummaging for God” in our lives. Rummaging is an excellent, commonplace activity that we often resort to when we have lost something; car keys, phones, and umbrellas have been among my favorites over the years.

The Examen is a practice that tells us something important about the spiritual life: Spiritual practice is preeminently about cultivating a sense of God’s presence. It isn’t about devotional piety or the number of hours we spend in overtly religious activity. It isn’t an anxious, endless effort to earn God’s love. The Spiritual life is about cultivating habitual awareness of God’s presence, which shapes and informs our lives.

Ignatius recommends two questions:

One: What were the events in your life today—the moments, conversations, and choices—that drew you closer to God and others in love?

Two: What were the events in your life today—the moments, conversations, and choices—that drove you away from God and others?

The answers to those simple questions invite us to evaluate our lives from a spiritual center. They are not about what feels good and what doesn’t feel good. Some things—such as addiction—feel good at first, but they invariably isolate us from God and others; by contrast, some things that don’t feel good, like asking for forgiveness, can draw us closer to God and those around us.

Instead, these questions raise our awareness of how patterns, habits, and choices shape our lives and how, armed with that knowledge, we can learn to be more readily available to God and others.

Rummaging around in our lives for God can be a source of inspiration, encouragement, strength, gratitude, and a renewed sense of spiritual purpose. That’s not a bad result for an activity that usually leads to discovering dust bunnies and lost umbrellas.—The Rev’d Dr. Frederick W. Schmidt.

Name Day: June 24 Remembered

Name Day: June 24

“On the eighth day, they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, ‘No; he is to be called John.’ They said to her, ‘None of your relatives has this name.’ Then, they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. He asked for a writing tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed.”—Luke 1:59-63.

If your name is John or a derivative of it, June 24 was your name day. We also celebrated it as the birthday of John the Baptist. In some countries, such as Greece, this is even more important than your regular birthday. When our daughter, Joanna, and her dad were in Greece on this, her name day, their guide Maria did not charge them for taking them around that day. When others heard it was her name day, they gave her gifts.

Just as important as this name day is to our family is the remembrance that June 24 is the birthday of Bob, or “Dede,” my husband’s father, who showed our children and us so much unconditional love and care. Increasingly, in my life, I find it necessary to remember the people who taught us about unconditional love. We can feel the love they brought into our lives as we remember the person.

Consider learning about your name, its origin, and even your name day.

On June 24, I also remembered my grandparents, Joe and Anna, as I was named after them. Again, these were two people who taught me about love without conditions. I was the “apple of their eye.” They loved me no matter what I did. They did not always condone what I did, but still loved the sinner. Through their love, I learned about the unconditional love of God.

Honor and remember those who have brought the presence of love into your life. My experience is that by bringing them back into our memory, we can still feel and experience that love, even if they are no longer with us and are now living in eternal life.

The God of my understanding does not give us this love and then stop it at death. Love lives on. Love never dies.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/