What Being an Editor Taught Me About Writing

I’m an editor at Random House, but for the last several years I’ve been writing around the edges of my day job: mornings, nights, weekends, wherever I can grab the free time. I began my first novel (which is publishing today) while I was working as an editor, and I credit my job with giving me the courage, and the tools, to tackle writing a book. The truth is that spending one’s life reading good writing—not just reading it, but thinking about what makes it so good—is the best way to teach one’s self how to do it. For some people, this might mean enrolling in an MFA program. For me, I was lucky enough to learn by observing the other editors around me, and working on manuscripts as they went from rough drafts to finished books. It was the best writing education I could have received. Here are a few of the things I learned along the way:

Writing is Revision
This won’t come as news to anyone, but I can’t stress it enough. The first draft is important, because you are working out the ideas and the plot on the page, and getting that first draft finished is an accomplishment, but what really matters is how many times you are willing to revise that draft. In my mind, this is where the role of hard work—as opposed to God-given talent—comes in. Some people are preternaturally gifted and can dash off a beautiful paragraph with no effort, but they aren’t necessarily the ones who are willing to revise, and revise again, and revise again, until their computer desktop is so cluttered with different drafts that the background is no longer visible.

When you are writing, you are attempting to communicate an idea to the world. In the first draft, the idea is still expressed in your own private language. It takes many revisions to clarify what you are really trying to say. As an editor, these are the notes I find myself scribbling in the margins of so many manuscripts: Clarify. Don’t get this. What does this mean? The language must be put through the wringer, over and over and over, so that when a reader finally picks up the book, they can say: I know exactly what she means.
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