Why Every Essay You Write Should Be the Best Essay You Can Write

Or How I Ended up Writing for the New York Times

I used to write for the New York Times.

It was my dream writing job. And I pretty much lucked into it. (Although there was definitely some hard work involved.)

The timing of my getting the gig was uncanny.

I’d been writing and publishing essays for years, mostly in small online venues, but more and more frequently, in places like the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Christian Science Monitor.

My good friend Stephen had just written me an email saying, “Your writing has really taken off this year. You’re being published in a lot of great places.”

I wrote back thanking him for reading and supporting my work, then confided that while I was thrilled to be published in the places my work currently appeared in, “my dream is to be published in the New York Times.”

I hit send. A moment later, an email appeared in my in box from an editor at the New York Times.

“Would you like to write for us?” he asked.

Freaky timing. Totally implausible. If you put that in a story, nobody would buy it. But that’s exactly how it happened.

He explained that the paper was starting a blog called Booming, which would be for, by and about Baby Boomers. He’d been following my work online and felt that my voice and the topics I wrote about would work for the project. (In fact, the first essay he published on the blog was one of mine.)

For the next two years, until the Times pulled the plug on Booming, I got to work with this terrific editor. It was the best writing experience of my life. I learned a lot, I loved every minute of it, and there’s no question that it made me a better writer.

So why am I telling you this?

Before my Times adventure, I had written mostly for a variety of small websites. I was paid, but not a lot. And while I worked with some terrific editors, I was writing for very small audiences.

Still, I worked very hard on those essays. It took me hours to write one 800 word piece.(Everything I write goes through dozens of rewrites. It always has and it probably always will.) I wanted them to be as good as I could possibly make them, even if only a handful of readers would ever read them.

Was all of this effort a waste of time? Absolutely not. Reading those essays is what made that editor want to take a chance on me.

It never once occurred to me that everything I wrote had to be to top notch because an editor for the Times just might be looking for new writers. I am now aware of the fact that this can happen, and I want to pass this awareness on to you.

Once you publish your work, you have no idea who’s going to read it. Your best friend. Your worst enemy. The one person who could give you your dream writing job.

If I hadn’t taken the time and trouble to rework the essays I wrote for those fabulous but small sites, I wouldn’t have made it into the Times.

In addition to being a writer, I’ve worked for years as a freelance editor and writing coach. One of the most important things I do for the writers I work with is stop them from publishing work that is good enough but could, with more work, be much better.

There are some great writers on Medium, but some of them are far too eager to hit Publish.

If only there were some mechanism whereby the Medium algorithm could measure just how good your work-in-progress is against how good it could be, and then hide the Publish button until your work was truly ready.

Until that happens? I dare you to try this. Instead of hitting Publish, wait for 24 hours and then return to the piece for one last read. I bet you’ll discover at least one change you could make to improve it.

You’ll probably discover several of them. And when you do hit Publish? It’ll be a much stronger piece.

You can thank me after it goes viral.

Writing Coach Roz Warren, who writes for everyone from the Funny Times to the New York Times, can help you improve and publish your work. Drop her a line at [email protected]. (That’s Ros with an “s,” not a “z.”)