Writers need to be editors but the reverse is not true. What you write won’t make it to a real editor unless you’ve edited it first.

Toggling between writing and editing requires both parts of the brain: the mystical part, which needs to trust something enough to follow it, and the critical part, which needs to judge.

You can compare building a story to building a house. Both require a framework, coordination between design and construction, and finding a buyer.

Few people will remark on the framework: that’s a given, it holds everything up. You don’t even see it. The same can be said for the construction, though you don’t want it to be rushed.

It’s the design that makes people feel a certain way. How the spaces expand, contract, flow; how the home sits in its surroundings.

The writer needs to be the idea-maker and the idea-killer, building, drawing, deconstructing. Digging stuff up, moving it around, hoping it will do better in a different location. Unlike a home construction, all these people need to operate under one hard-hat. Like a house, it all starts with a sketch.

Categories: writing

Tags: Arts, Communications, design, inspiration, Seth Godin, Writer, Writers Resources, writing, Writing and Editing