Taking inventory of my life the other day, I recalled a consequential moment.
At the end of winter term in my third year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I learned I had amassed enough grade points to qualify to write a fourth-year honours thesis.
I asked my favourite history instructor if he would supervise. He motioned me to take a seat and drew on his unlit pipe.
“One condition.”
“Like they do in Alcoholics Anonymous,” he said, pointing the pipe at me, “you need to stand up and say ‘My name is Jamey Carson, and I am a bad writer.’ ”
I did, sat down, and was relieved.
“Now we can go to work. But like any good dog, you need a few pats,” so he said some good things about my thesis idea before sending me off to a first-year remedial writing class that met in the basement of the undergraduate library.
Over the past year we’ve reviewed more than 1,000 pieces of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. About 12 percent of them are published. To be a keeper, the first line or sentence – the first four or five words, really – will typically make or break a submission. Most of the time, submissions fall short, but sometimes a story or poem sails over that first hurdle. But the most gratifying experience is identifying the ones that need a little boost. Working with authors on the back and forth of diction, organization, voice, and Strunk & White’s eternal rules for good writing gets to the joy and play of creation. Then stitching together and sequencing an issue is a lot like writing a story with other people’s stories, like curating a mix tape and paying attention to mood, tempo, and style so that the whole never falls flat.
In editing, as in writing, you can only be true to yourself and trust it will resonate with others. So mark the first four or five words in each of the pieces that follow and see if you can see and maybe even hear an echo of that springtime afternoon in 1989 when I knocked on Professor Walker’s door to ask him for help.