Member-only story
WRITING
I Hope You Run Into A Really Annoying Editor Who Will Take Up Permanent Residence In Your Head
You’ll be a better writer
The first editor who made an impression on me was only a couple of years older than I was. I haven’t seen her since the mid-1980s, but she still lives in my head and edits everything I write.
One of the first things I did when I got to college was head to the newsroom. My tiny high school didn’t have a newspaper, and I couldn’t wait to start writing for my college paper.
That was where I truly learned to write — from the student editors just a couple of years older than I was who edited everything I wrote.
Sometimes these editors could be pretty harsh.
“How do you know this is true?” a woman named Lisa would ask, zeroing in on a certain sentence.
“Well, I would assume–”
“Don’t. Assume.” She said it just that way. It wasn’t a friendly, “Oh, don’t assume anything, sweetie!” She spoke in the tones you would expect from a heavily armed mob boss.
I was afraid of her. I might have been less afraid of a mob boss.
