It’s been said that authors hate their editors. I don’t hate mine. But I sort of get where the sentiment comes from. During the past weeks I’ve been working with Nikki Lyn Pugh on the book I’ve been blogging about here at the One Earth Project. When how I’m saying something doesn’t make sense to her, she tells me. She’ll challenge the order of my paragraphs and ideas. Sometimes she questions a phrase I’m in love with. Arrgh!
I assure you, I don’t go, “Oh goody!” when Nikki challenges what I’ve created. But most of the time I’m thinking, “Well, if Nikki doesn’t flow with this, there’ll be plenty of other readers who won’t either.” Thinking about you, Readers, motivates me to improve how I express myself. I want most of what I write to flow for you. Not that I don’t want to startle you sometimes, stir your feelings (whether you like or don’t like what I’m saying matters less than that you feel something), and evoke changes in how you think, relate, and engage life. Nikki also tells me where what I’m writing has the power to evoke such responses.
Last week I wrote an endorsement for Nikki’s new website, As Your Word, (you’ve heard it said, “you’re as good as your word”) about her work as a writing coach and editor. Here’s what I said:
Nikki has a new website about her coaching and editing of writers. I wrote and endorsement for her last week and said: Nikki improved my manuscript immensely. She showed me where a different arrangement could smooth the bumpy, jostling sequence of my ideas and give them a stronger flow. Doing so, I know, is not only kinder to my readers, but it increases impact as well. Where my paragraphs took intuitive leaps, she’d tell me that I’d lost her. Then I knew I had to take reader-sized steps, sequencing how I got to where I had leapt. Repeatedly, she called for examples that seasoned my conceptual sentences with experiences from the sensory, daily world. Even when I disagreed with a suggested change, I knew I needed to make some kind of change at that point in order to connect stronger with my readers. I know that I am a better writer today than I was before I began working with Nikki.