Member-only story
The Kindness of Strangers
When editors make you the writer you want to be
There’s a certain loneliness to writing, a mandatory introversion that creates a separateness. The outline and the rough draft have to get done in the long, quiet hours of torment as imperfection and deadlines loom. Impostor syndrome arrives, telling us we’ll never finish, that we’re not worthy of a completed manuscript. That no one will ever read our words.
But there is a silver lining: the editing process. This is especially true when working with an editor you trust. The moment of handing over your ready draft to someone else — and the back-and-forth commences. There are revisions and rewrites to be done, feedback to be given. Another set of eyes that commits to shaping your piece. It is scary yet necessary and somehow welcomed.
The editor reaches in and saves us from ourselves, from our wanting to overwork our own material or being afraid to make a bolder statement. They offer us connection after our seclusion. They bring us out of our protective shells and make us interact with the world again. It’s hard — we just want to write inside our cocoons — yet we benefit from the words of another.
Editors are strange people. They kill off our beloved characters and prune our grandiose ideas, shearing the way we look at the realm of our creation and…
