editing games

Editing sucks. You know what does not suck, sharing ideas in a highly animated fashion; that does not suck. Today I was previewed to a masterful reinvigoration of the editing process. Google docs, the amazing device/idea that allows multiple users to edit the same document while chatting about it. Suddenly the tedious task is transformed into an exciting, almost game like event.
I felt the buzz of excitement wash over me as I stepped into our fishbowl-like office earlier today. A group of graduate student was clustering over the shoulder of their comrade, she was editing. Apparently somehow the process of refining her manuscript has become a spectator event. A sentence would be highlighted and then disappear, only to be replaced (in real time) by a cleaner and more precise version of itself. The line between collaborator and opponent is blurred in this arena of ideas. She takes up the challenge and ROCKS IT. If there to be a more corporeal representation of this process it would be two masons wailing at a marble block, its shapeless body taking form with every blow.
If you are not there yet, let me just tell you that what happened is a big deal. It is rare when technology brings the collaborative process so perfectly in synch, but when it does you cannot help but watch and marvel. This unfortunately is the core of a writing paradox. Putting your work and ideas into writing can be a hugely creative and intellectually fulfilling process, when it is done for the first time. Re-reading your work for the fiftieth time, smoothing out all of the minor wrinkles. Asking, if this word is better then that (I do not know, who the he'll cares), is a nightmare. We publish our work when we are sick of looking at it. We publish it to banish it from our minds, to move on, to start something new. It is the only way writing makes sense really.