Ranting Details

Crazy Hats

(YOU'RE SO VAIN.  YOU PROBABLY THINK THIS POST IS ABOUT YOU...YOU'RE SO VAIN. I'LL BET YOU THINK THIS POST IS ABOUT YOU.  DON'T YOU?  DON'T YOU?   I CALL THIS PICTURE: CRAZED WRITER.)
 
DISCLAIMER: THIS POST MAY MAKE NO SENSE.  I BLAME SUBTLETEA'S STRAWBERRY GREEN CRACK TEA. EITHER WAY, IT'S RANT TIME!

I’ve spent the weekend parked in my favorite tea shop, in fact the only tea shop I know of in the city, wearing two hats: a writer’s, and an editor’s.  In this technologically advanced age we live in, switching between the two doesn’t take bobby pins or adjustable plastic snaps; it’s as simple as closing one browser window and opening another.  Then why does each hat feel as burdensome as a sombrero in the middle of a crowded subway car?  Probably because when I switch between the two I feel increasingly bi-polar, and sense my own hypocrisy bubbling to the surface. 

Whenever I open a GoogleDoc (a fancy way of sharing documents with a group of people, allowing for multiple, interactive editors for a piece) and look at the choices gracing the top of the window, I am amazed at the power a delete button has. It is one of many tools used to thwack through the overgrown shrubbery as gallantly as a Prince getting to the maiden in the tower.  In a matter of seconds I am able to reformat a paragraph or condense a wordy sentence, as I aim to make each piece stronger than when I first encountered it.  After all, that’s my job as an editor: to catch errors that whizzed past the writer, tighten the piece, and clarify any factual or structural errors that jump out at me. 

The problem is many of these corrections aren’t outlined in grammatical guidebooks…they’re subjective.  What may be a wordy sentence to me is a labor of love to the writer.  At a certain point, I can’t coddle the writers I’m working with, and by the power vested in me, I must make decisions without running each adjective choice by them.  Technology makes engaging in a dialogue about these changes an easy, interactive process; easy to engage in arguments about said choices, that is. 

I should know.  When I put on my writer hat, I’m on the other end of the spectrum, emailing my editor pleading my case for the reasoning behind a certain lead-in, or a missing exclamation point.  I've even cursed them behind their back before!  Blasphemy!  Because of the nature of my writing work—some articles are aimed at 14-year-old girls, other papers are for 30-year-old gay men—I have the joy of not only switching between two hats, but instead having different ones for each type of assignment I have as a writer.  Sometimes I even wear a tiara. 

While it’s ideal for a piece of writing to be as all encompassing as possible, the audience has to always be taken into account, assignment to assignment.  This idea is much easier for me to grasp as an editor.  When wearing my writing hat—or powdered wig, or piñata—I sometimes feel as if my work is being raped by the delete button.  How could my editor diminish my work, so?  I wonder.  Yet I am freewheeling with the same button when I’m the editor.

In my short experience in this profession, where it has been about as “learn as you go” as one can get, I’ve come to appreciate good editors more and more with each passing day.  Sometimes I feel like my vocabulary as an editor dwindles, leaving my reasoning when changing a particular sentence of another writer to: “This is bad.”  The best editors I have worked with have gentle ways of suggesting alterations and tightening the piece with enough subtlety that it maintains my voice; after going through their brain, it’s just crystal clear, rather than the filled with the occasional mumbled sentence.

Because of online editing programs and trading drafts by email, the communication becomes clouded in a profession that is all about communicating words to an audience.  What could be an innocent change on the editor’s part may be seen as a personal attack from the writer’s viewpoint. 

I think becoming a good editor involves gaining absolute trust and respect of the writer, in as little time as possible, something I haven’t mastered yet.  It can’t be a power trip for either side.  Maybe I just need to sit the writer (or editor, depending on who I am...confused yet?) in a room with me, put them in an equally ludicrous hat so we can just laugh at each other; you know, leveling the ground. 

Sascha's All Over Your Newsstand

A familiar face hits newsstands this week in none other than Newsweek Magazine!  Sascha Radetsky, ABT Soloist and friend, makes his publishing debut with a fantastic article about the stigma associated with male dancers.  I couldn't be more proud of his incredibly articulate article and hope that it's just the beginning of his writing career.  When I made it to the end of the article, all I could think was "damn, I wish I had written that!"  The ultimate compliment from one writer to another.  Congrats Sascha!  Check it out for yourself and pick up a copy on newsstands now. 

Side note: How killer is that photograph?!  Taken by  Nathan Perkel.

A Little 'movmnt'

When I was approached to write for movmnt magazine several months ago, I must admit that I was more than a little nervous.  Writing has become a major part of my everyday routine, but there is a huge difference between blogging about my own life and reporting about other people and their work.  Through the nerves, I was able to tackle the challenge so graciously assigned to me by editor in chief David Benaym, and learn a thing or two in the process. 

In the issue, which just hit newsstands, I contributed two articles about two very different men: composer Nico Muhly, and dancer Kenny Wormald.  One has brown hair, one has brown hair.  One lives in New York, one lives in LA.  All of those superficial descriptions meant nothing in my mind compared to the key difference in my experience: one was an in person interview, one was an email interview. 

Never before had I been faced with the possibility of writing something about someone I had never even met!  It’s difficult enough to capture someone’s essence when you’ve spent your whole life with them; trying to do so through a series of video footage and letters on a screen is nearly impossible.  Yet that’s just what I love about writing- the challenge of making a coherent and engaging whole out of scattered puzzle pieces without a box to look at.  In the end I was very pleased with what I submitted as final drafts.  All there was to do was wait. 

I’ve come to learn that the time between submission and publication is almost more nerve-wracking than the creation process.  Suddenly it’s out of my hands and I’m unable to do much more revising, even if I have those moments of clarity that would have made all the difference when my fingers were pounding the keyboard a month before.   

What I received in the mail yesterday exceeded my expectations.  movmnt is still a fledgling publication (with six issues under its belt), but each successive issue becomes more assured, adds more star power, and builds its readership by leaps and bounds  The mission statement on the cover says “Fashion, dance, music and pop culture as a lifestyle,” which is a refreshing welcome to the arts publication world. 

It’s also giving young writers (like myself and fellow-Winger Taylor Gordon, who has a fantastic article about dancers dealing with injuries) a chance to flex their writing muscles.  All of this adds up to a publication that has its finger on the pulse of the young arts world, and one that’s not to be missed.  Pick up your copy at a Barnes and Noble or Universal News (in NYC) today!  Check out movmnt.com for more information. 

In other publication news, I also have a fun article in the current issue of Dance Spirit.  Once again, it was a refreshing change from writing about myself- I got to interview seven corps dancers from the country’s leading companies about their favorite corps ballets.  Pick up your copy today! 

Deniledis

Contrary to popular belief, I haven't been deniledis.  I have been sidelined.  In case you missed that fact through the past eight months of blogging, it's now in all of its printed glory.  My first ever article for a magazine hits newsstands this week and I couldn't be more excited.  I worked extremely hard on this article, which chronicles the development of my seemingly endless illness.  Through the gentle guidance of my fantastic editor Abigail Rasminsky, I delved into the physical and emotional turmoil that EBV has brought up in me; at least all that could fit neatly into two glossy pages.  PICK UP YOUR JANUARY ISSUE OF DANCE SPIRIT!!!!

Much to the disbelief of my parents (and my bank account) I received my issue at a very special moment.  Are you ready for it?  Tonight was my FIFTH visit to "Xanadu," which officially beats my previous record which was a tie between "Rent," and "Hairspray."  The fantastic photographer Erin Baiano, who has taken spectacular photos over the past year for Dance Spirit (including the January cover)  was one of my dates for the evening.  Right before the show was about to begin, she pulled an issue out of her bag and laid it in my lap.  A pretty cool moment indeed. 

I'm All Over Your Newsstand

The day has finally come when I can make my big announcement.  I’m GAY!  In a little over a month, I will have my first article published in “Dance Spirit” Magazine.  About three months ago, I was contacted to write a story for the magazine about my struggle dealing with Epstein Barr Virus and when the January issue hits the stands it will be out for all the world to see.

It seems like I’ve written about this subject ad nauseam but I was excited beyond belief to work on an official article chronicling my struggle.  Over the past seven months I’ve wrestled with various ways to explain my ailment to company members, friends and family with very little success.  The challenge of writing an article for a magazine forced me to come up with the clearest and most concise way of communicating my struggle to a wide audience.  This proved to be much more of a challenge than I anticipated, but also and incredible learning experience.

Having only written for blogs over the past two years, my foray into the magazine world brought up some different challenges than I’m used to.  There’s the pesky fact that before a magazine sees the light of day, it goes through the hands of various editors who all have their fair share to say regarding ways to improve it.  With “Ranting” and  “The Winger,” I run the show with my posts but I’m also very much in the dark regarding some things. 

With the help of my incredible editor Abigail Rasminsky, I was forced to take my writing to the next level.  She taught me to go through sentence by sentence and streamline my thought so it would have the greatest emotional impact (as well as being grammatically correct.)  With each subsequent draft she urged me to flesh out my descriptions and shy away from broad generalizations.  Part of what made this so difficult was the inherent difficulty in describing an illness as vague as EBV.  Ultimately, through her incredible support, I feel like I was able to get to the clearest description of both the physical and emotional debilitation that accompanies my sickness. 

Even though I feel like I ultimately got a solid article out, it was an emotionally draining process.  I must admit that even now, after reading the article over nearly fifty times it still breaks a little part of my heart each time.  When I first began writing it, we all had hoped by the time it hit newsstands the pain would be a thing of the past but with each passing day it gets harder to accept that it’s still here.  In some ways writing the article helped me purge some of my frustration regarding being sick. 

Going through sentence by sentence to such an extreme degree often found me throwing my hands in the air wondering how I could possibly make my emotions clear to a broad audience.  With each draft I had the little devil known as word limit sitting on my shoulder urging me to cut, cut, cut.  This proved to be the most difficult task because I had to encompass information about my career, the origins of the illness, the emotional and physical implications of EBV and many other things.   Through the gentle guidance of my editor, she provoked me to challenge myself and accomplish the task.   As pesky as word limit is, it's a very useful parameter.  With anything I create, I thrive off of having some sort of boundaries to challenge me and the word limit forced me to be a better writer. 

It’s strange to think that without my illness a door like this might never have been opened.  It’s also strange to think that this was the first contract I signed that wasn’t for the use of my body (i.e dancing…you have a dirty, dirty mind.)  I’m excited to finally have my friends (and all of the other people who will come across it) read something that explains what I’ve been going through in the best way possible.  Be sure to pick up a copy when it hits newsstands in mid-December!!!