The Value of a Good Editor, or

How To Stop Blatherer's Disease

by Michielle DJ Beck

Recently, I powered through an outline for a book I'm working on.  It had been sitting around and was lonely.  Plus, I was having nightmares about the main character and needed to get him out of my head. He's not the nicest person.

So I blew the dust off the outline, cleaned it up a bit, made a couple of changes, and thought it was a masterpiece.  I sent it off to a colleague, mentor, and friend to edit it, thinking he'd say how great it was and I'd go on with my life.

Yeah. Right.

The returned version was more markup than original.  At least it was a pretty shade of blue, thanks to Word's Track Changes feature, but that didn't take all the sting out of it.  I'd say he took out nearly half of what I'd written, and changed another 25% of what was left.  He made only one comment in the entire document, but it was a doozy.

Still, overall he liked it, and he thought it was much improved from what I had previously written, from a plausible story perspective.  The gears clashed in my head. How can he say it's good, but take out so much of it?  What was wrong with the parts he didn't leave in, or the words and phrases he changed?

I've been a writer for nearly 20 years, and I mean that in the sense of writing professionally, for money, and paying the bills.  I have an agent and a book that's been published and everything.  I also do editing, which means I fix other people's work.  That should make me perfect, right?

I wish.

But of course it doesn't make me perfect. I t makes me a writer - and that's it.

Because of the kind of writing I normally do, I have a particular style.  It's a good style for what I do, but it's not the best style in the world when it comes to handling outlines. I failed to take this into account when I wrote the outline, because I didn't see why it would matter.  My style is my style.  Why should I need to change it?  

Could it be because one style does not fit all.

What my editor friend was trying to tell me, politely (mostly), was that I have Blatherer's Disease (aka The Writing Rambles).  I'm afflicted with it, and it's something I need to address.  While not a huge problem, I take too many words to say something simple.  (I'm currently at 432, right now, for example).

So, what's the point?

The point is that I'm not the only one.  I know there are others out there, just like me, afflicted with the desire to ramble on and on, describing every little thing, when there's absolutely no reason to do so.  Please people, don't do that - to your outlines, books, or articles.  If you're one of the Ramblers, and you're starting to recognize yourself in this post, get yourself a good editor - one whom you trust to make your work better, while still letting you tell your story.

You may not be able to cure your Blatherer's Disease, but you can learn to control it. Ask an editor how.  He'll tell you. 

Just be prepared to be told.

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