The Editing Process

In my line of work I receive many many proof copies - samples - of books which will release into the market in the next few months. I get everything from thrillers, general interest fiction and non-fiction, religious titles and romances to our more amusingly termed genres. Each of these proofs are less than perfect copies of the finished product. There are spelling errors, occasionally print errors, zero jacket designs, sometimes the text is laborious because it hasn't yet been cleaned up by an editor... Ag, there can be all sorts "wrong" with the book. And yet proofs are designed to give people like me a very strong feel for what the final product will be like. We must then bridge the gap between unfinished and final copy and sell the product to people in the know - bookshop managers and so forth.

Now imagine we could create "proof" copies of our own lives and future lives, complete with unfinished "covers" (our looks which will change, without prior notice), odd idiosyncracies which flow throughout (bad learned behaviours and childhood traumas), and plot twists which are hard to follow (sometimes we just can't decide exactly how we'd like things to work out). We'd present these "proofs" to our prospective partners and employers to peruse and decide whether or not they'd like to have you - in your exposed entirety - or not. There would be input from all sources - the designers (God), editors (your parents), marketing people (your friends) and others. It would be possible to get feedback so that positive changes could be made in advance, and then you'd send out another "proof" copy to, say, an employer who would like to know more about you. It'd be as simple as saying "Sure, I'll send that right on over. It's a summary of my life so far and the rest as it shall happen, give or take an event or 2."

What do you think? Yay or nay? I like the idea of constant change and improvement, perhaps that's why I like the idea of a proof being a work in progress. Sure the final book is gorgeous and smells nice and looks pretty and reads well, but really its the result of months of hard work put into making it what it is. And even then some books bomb and others sell and sell. Maybe its more about seeing the the innate value in each and every book, for what it is, in the same way as we should look beyond the obvious in each person and see the work in progress and the achievements which have been hard won. Imagine what your life "proof" would be like to read, so far, and how would you like the next few chapters to turn out...