"Crow 3" - E. A. Hanninen, 2018, Pencil & Acrylic
People aren’t generally so willing to look at the unexpected, unless someone else forces them to. The expected is comfortable. The unexpected is an invitation to anticipating disappointment. Kids are particularly susceptible to this sort of thinking. Disappointment is hard for them to bear.
What about you? Do you take risks? Do you enjoy the unexpected, or would you rather know what’s coming?
As a 12-year-old, I already excelled in reading and writing, knew I wanted to be a writer “when I grew up,” and had a track-record of outstanding grades in linguistic comprehension.
I was also just barely blossomed from debilitating shyness and wallflower martyrdom.
I had transferred into a new school that year and was adjusting quite well to an experimental learning system that the Seattle Public Middle School Administration had implemented. Students were encouraged to work at their own speeds on curriculum materials. I really liked being left to my own devices and often completed stages of work ahead of most of my classmates. Sometimes ahead of all of them. And what I especially liked was not being called upon (singled out — ACK!) to answer questions out loud, as everyone was working on different aspects of their lessons. Instead, I’d get called to speak with the teacher in a one-on-one moment.
Of course, some of our teachers liked to mess us up, and would be waiting at the start of a class period with some group activity planned. One day — the first day of a new quarter, and a new class — Mrs. Stories, we’ll call her, began drawing on her chalkboard as we all filed into her Language Arts classroom during the bell. She made some dashes, then a long, straight (as straight as a piece of chalk can draw), vertical line, a horizontal line beneath it, a horizontal above and to the left only, and then another short vertical under the previous line.
Most of us gasped as soon as we recognized what she’d drawn while we picked out and sat in unfamiliar chairs. Was Mrs. Stories really asking us to play a game of Hangman? In class? What kind of trick was this?
She told us that she just wanted to “get a feel for where we were at” with vocabulary. And, so, we commenced. Most of the words she tried to trip us up with were of 5 or more letters, and she even threw in a short sentence for one round. She chose students randomly from those who raised hands to try guessing at the letters to fill in the blanks. This was more than 2 years before Wheel of Fortune debuted on television in 1975, so Mrs. Stories didn’t think to rig up a big carnival wheel for us to spin.
After about 20 minutes or so, Mrs. Stories announced the last round to be played. If we completed this final word before the stickman was “hung,” she’d let us leave class early. This caused a loud stir of excitement. Our teacher made a mere three dashes on the board for us to fill. This is going to be so easy, exclaimed several students.
The first letter was filled in after two guesses — with the most common letter of the English alphabet: “e.” Then it got harder. Hands went up, letters were incorrectly guessed. The students became quiet, fretful. Worried. Then somebody threw out an “m.” That was right. Hooray!
But oh, now, the students were stumped. Hand up. Wrong guess. Hand up. Wrong guess. Stickman almost dead. One guess left. Silence reigned.
“Anybody?” Mrs. Stories asked. She knew she had us. We were going to have to stick out the rest of the class until the bell rang.
I took a steadying breath and raised my hand. I knew of only one letter that could possibly fit that last dash. Did it? Hadn’t anybody else on our continent ever heard of this word?
All heads swiveled to stare at me. The quiet girl who hardly spoke was going to make the guess. Mrs. Stories nodded and motioned at me to leap into the point of no return with a potential letter.
“u?”
Every student in the class groaned in unison. Some hurled daggers at me with their circus-act eyeballs. Then we all watched as Mrs. Stories noiselessly moved to the chalkboard and poised to draw the stickman’s frown of death.
Instead, she reached over to the dashes and slowly drew in the “u” at the end:
e. m. u.
My scarlet face cooled at least 15 degrees as the same circus animals turned to me and shrieked, “How did you know?!”
“Very good,” said Mrs. Stories, who looked right at me to vindicate my almost-fatal bravery. “Class dismissed.”
How did I know? I read a lot, for one thing. I’d also seen an emu at the zoo once, and I remembered how odd the spelling was. Not all kids are exposed to information about exotic animals or to the animals, themselves, let alone are familiar with unusual spellings. While most adults have heard of emus, and probably know how to spell emu, when words are unexpected, they aren’t always so easy to anticipate.
This is one of the reasons that editing, or self-editing, can be difficult for so many people; not everyone handles working with details in the same way. Editing requires a great deal of memory skills, as well as attention to details. There are linguistic functions to comprehend, and grammatical rules to follow, and there's a huge vocabulary to memorize (or to willingly research).
The unexpected is bound to make a showing, and it must be closely analyzed to prove or disprove its valid existence. There must also exist an unusual propensity and aptitude for the complexities of languages.
A lot of writers (and non-writers) decide they want to be professional editors. I’m not always convinced this is a logical decision. Not all writers have as highly a developed sense of detail as is required for them to be successful at such a job. There are such coveted positions as Acquisitions Editors, though, and if one is inclined to be that type of editor, more of a curator, the herding of minutiae is not of the same intensity.
My anecdote at the beginning of the article was meant to illustrate that not all of us know when we’re following the right paths, or what those paths should look like. I knew I wanted to be a writer and that I had an above-average connection to and comprehension of language, but in conscious application, for me, the concepts of editing were abstract and distant. While it took a growing awareness of the craft of editing for me to gradually embrace it as a vocation, it was the application of my subconscious aptitude (along with continual study) over the long years that made such an occupation one of paramount suitability.
Is becoming an editor right for you? You not only have to love the craft of writing, you also need to embrace the ability to change. You must seek both the expected tenants of structure and the unexpected knack for unusual diction, when it comes. You must not tire of the details, but instead, always read carefully and comprehend.
Prepare for emus where you expect only crows.