Speed reader

I'm in that floaty space between the old job and the new one, trying to wind down and ramp up at the same time. It involves shuffling big stacks of paper.

Other editors may purge their files like clockwork, but I expect we're mostly pack rats. You never know when you might need to reference that thing you worked on a few years back. The one where that guy was talking, with the clause you fixed just right, and it may come up again, so . . . you understand.

Looking over two-plus years of work reminded me of the painful, sweet, inevitable learning curve, its steepness and pace. As the new kid, you know the least about what's going on; as the editor, you're supposed to correct what all the seasoned writers have to say about what's going on. It's an odd situation.

I've always read quickly, and I imagine that's no small reason I wound up doing it for a living. That and the fact that people were willing to pay me. (I'm still amazed.)

But reading for pleasure tends to go much faster than reading for work. A novel passes by like so much ethereal distraction. The more I like it, the sooner I want to move forward and see what's next.

Reading with an eye to correct is a very different beast: slower by necessity, less about immediate gratification than about establishing a prolonged relationship with the words. Context is king either way—but in a pleasure read, I aim for total immersion with no awareness. In a professional read, I'm constantly aware.

This is all by way of observing that my professional reading pace has increased lately, and so has my snap judgment of what I read. It might just be a survival mechanism, since the volume of work has been vast in this job. But I'd like to think it's also a sharpening of instinct.

The deeper I dig into this craft, the more often I look things up. Back in the day, I thought I was supposed to have the rules down and recite them on command. The biggest surprise has been the flexibility of language within those rules. Not everything can be argued—thank goodness, Mr. Strunk and Mr. White—but it can often be discussed.

So why the honed instinct? How does it help? I'm still sussing this out, but I think it means I'm starting to understand when the discussion is worth having.