Two days ago my toddler ran out into the snow wearing nothing more than her shirt, a thin pair of stretchy pants, and her slip-on shoes. She had been helping me with wash and then needed a diaper change. After I took off the dirty diaper, she went to sit on the toddler potty. As she was sitting there, I realized that I needed to use the bathroom, too, so I did. Before I was finished, she got up from her potty and left the bathroom. (She can unlock and open the door.)
I finished as quickly as I could, pulling on my pants as I hurried from the room to find her, because I just *knew* that she was going to do something that she should not have been doing. As I was wondering which direction to go to find her, I heard my four year old running into the kitchen from the backyard (more driveway than grass), where he and his five-year-old brother had been digging a tunnel through the snow piled up from the weekend’s storm, yelling, “Mommy, she’s outside!” “She,” of course, was the two-year-old.
Pushing past my preschooler, I ran down the steps, through the garage, and to the backyard where snow was starting to fall again. There was my toddler, standing in the falling snow, without winter attire, shivering in the cold. She had wanted to go out with her brothers, and had made her escape when she saw her opportunity to go out the unlocked door without Mommy stopping her. As I scooped her up and hurried back inside, I was glad to see that she had at least pulled up her pants, since she had run out without even a diaper. In the family room, I covered her with a blanket and tried to warm her hands that were red from exposure although she hadn’t been outside for more than a minute. When she protested, I put a fresh diaper on her and let her go. She sat down and began to color, and did not try to get outside again. (Her brothers were still playing happily outside.)
That night, before falling asleep, I replayed the scene in my mind. In her haste to go out into the snow, my daughter did not prepare for being in the weather conditions where she wanted to be. She is, of course, too young to reason that she needs to put on coat, and boots, and has, and mittens, and maybe even a scarf, to be out in the snow. Suddenly I had a realization: her actions are not much different from those of some authors who eschew working with a professional editor. My toddler’s rushing out into the snow without the proper winter attire is analogous to publishing a piece of writing without editing it carefully (or at all). In their haste to publish an article, a newsletter, or another piece of writing, authors either forget to pay attention to the editing process, or neglect (or reject) it altogether. The result is a published work without the proper attire.
Recently a potential client sent a few pages to me to edit, to see how I would handle a typical assignment. I was very thorough and commented on many of my edits/suggestions, explaining the reasoning for my edits. I did not get the assignment, but I did get a lesson in the fact that some authors don’t recognize the value of the input of an excellent editor. When I read the published pieces, I was momentarily discouraged, even embarrassed, because they still included the spelling and grammar errors that I had corrected (but the author had rejected), but in the end, I was glad that my name wasn’t behind the publication, although the potential client had rejected my edits and had gone with those of another.
An editor picking apart an author’s work, or being blunt, is not doing so to hurt the author’s feelings or to insult the author, but to make the author look good! By publishing a piece of writing without letting a professional editor review it or without accepting that editor’s corrections to grammar and spelling, the author appears to be less informed, maybe even careless. Most importantly, the author risks losing credibility with the audience.
This event made me wonder: Which is more important – that an editor spares an author’s feelings, but ignores errors, or that an editor is blunt about issues with the text and makes edits that helps the author to appear smart, professional, and knowledgeable? Shouldn’t the author risk having feelings hurt momentarily, if it means appearing smarter, more professional, more knowledgeable, to the audience? Why would an author NOT want his or her work to be error-free, to be grammatically perfect? Why would an author reject grammar and spelling corrections? It makes no sense to me.
Content creators, please understand: Most editors–those who actually proofread and correct writing errors, among other things that a professional editor can do–do not get a byline. They aren’t looking for the credit; they only want to make your text clear, concise, grammatically correct, and free of errors. They aren’t trying to “steal your thunder,” but want to help you to communicate professionally. They want to make your work “shine.” Which situation makes a reader think that an author isn’t as smart as she is: reading an article that completely preserves the author’s voice but includes glaring errors, or one that is error-free but that changes an author’s voice in places, for the better?
In the end, why would any author NOT choose to work with a competent, professional editor? In the end, you get the value for which you pay.
