WRITERS

Somedays It Actually Does No Good To Try

And yet we continuously edit to make a difference

I’ll be damned if it didn’t happen again!

Just this week, another fledgling writer ignored my editorial suggestions and found another publication willing to publish the piece, along with all of its typos, grammatical debauchery, and complete adulteration of the English language.

I’m so pissed off right now. Look, I don’t have to tell a lot of you folks out there how frustrating it is. A lot of you are editors as well as readers and writers. A shit ton of you knows terrible copy when you see it. Most of the time, we can tell how rotten the damned fish is before we even read the first paragraph of content just by how poorly written the freaking title is.

Let alone the presentation, the lack of minding basic rules of photo inclusion and proper captioning, and understanding the value of some flipping white space for God’s sake.

It would be one thing if I and many of my editing sisters and brothers got paid to do what we do. Hell, you pay me $.02 a word to edit your 1000 word piece, and I make a cool twenty bucks. Then if you decide to seek out another publication house here that will take your shit unedited, why the hell should I care?

I got twenty bucks in my pocket.

But it doesn’t work like that here, does it? Most, if not all, of us editors (maybe some of the Mega-Publications pay their editing staff), do this shit for free.

Yeah, that’s right for free. And why do we do this?

Because we want to help make a difference in a young writer’s work. We want to help them by pointing out where they could do better. As non-paid editors, we have no stake in a fledgling writer’s game other than to help them improve.

And yet, time and again, a fledgling writer will back out of a current publication and start casting their net looking for a place to get their work published without having to do any additional work.

I just don’t get it.

It’s like by offering some suggestions on their shit or asking them to reconsider the way they’ve written it, we just poked them in the eye and kicked them in the shin. The very minute we correct their shit, they go into hysterics.

Instead of looking at the suggestions and saying, “hey maybe they’re right. Maybe I should try the change” these writers are pulling their piece and taking it to another more sympathetic and much less stringent (my opinion here — and much less educated) publication and getting the shit published as-is.

I swear to God it makes no sense to try with some of these writers. Quite frankly, I often question my good sense when shit like this happens. And guess what? Most of the editors on this platform will probably nod in agreement on this next statement.

It happens a lot.

For me, at least two maybe three times a day if I’m really crunching words. At the very minimum, at least twice a week. So why do me and a shit ton of non-paid, frustrated as hell editors here keep doing it?

Because of you fledgling writer.

We want you to learn how to grow your craft and make it better. And because we seem to be naturally inclined to be nurturers and caregivers dammit, we’re willing to give our time and our knowledge to you for free, no strings attached.

We’re willing to help you for free. I don’t know about you, but free happens to be my all-time number one, best four-letter word in the entire English language.

All it costs you is a little additional time on your piece. The time you should have spent at the beginning anyway, running your essay through a more stringent editing process. The time you should have spent really examining your sentence structure and asking yourself, are those verbs correct? Does it sound like proper English when reading it aloud? Hell, does it read like proper English when reading it silently?

How about this last question?

Should I just scrap this shit and start over? Did you ever even stop to think about that one? Or did you just submit the shit thinking you were the penultimate authority on the subject you’re writing about and this piece was Pulitzer worthy then merrily roll along to your next one?

Don’t take this as me being frustrated…

Okay, take this as me being frustrated, but it’s because I, like so many of my editing sisters and brothers, want to help.

Remember we’re carers and nurturers. Our puppies and cats have grown old (along with most of us), and we need someone with which to share our tricks of the trade.

Okay, spoil.

Don’t make our trying to help you so damned hard. Don’t always dis our attempts to edit your work to make it better. What we do is work to make your words stand out and make an impact. If it’s your soul you think we’re trying to correct, trust us; we know the drill. We know and understand full well what it’s like to bleed onto the paper. We’ve all been there, hell, we go there every single day ourselves.

Don’t make it so that each day before we start our editing duties, we wonder why in the hell we’re even trying. Don’t make us think that somedays it actually does no good to try.

We’re continuously editing, hoping it will make a difference. Aren’t you writing for the same reason, to make a difference?

Well, okay then.

Thank you so much for reading. You didn’t have to, but I’m certainly glad you did.

Let’s keep in touch: [email protected]

© P.G. Barnett, 2020. All Rights Reserved.