Editors: having an outside eye

“Murder your darlings.”

—English Professor Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1916

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

—William Faulkner

My system for writing these posts is structured to catch any mistakes and to give myself time to edit. I write the post on Wednesdays, it comes out on Thursdays as a test mailing, I tweak it, edit it, check all the links, and send it to anyone I mention to get their permission and input. The final post comes out to my mailing list on Sunday mornings and is then populated on all socials on Tuesday mornings.

In other words, I am my own editor. For better or worse. There are many things I know I miss and much that could be stronger in my writing. So when I was asked by the extraordinary writer, Erika Raskin, to write something for Streetlight Magazine where she is an editor, I said, YES!

If you haven’t yet discovered Streetlight Magazine, it’s an online treasure trove of poetry, fiction, memoir, and art.

Erika asked for 500 words. In my notes, I wrote down that she needed 2500 words. You can see why I might need an editor in more than just my writing!

I worked on a piece I was really excited about and sent it off to Erika, still shy of the 2500 (!) words, it was about 2000. I hoped it was OK.

Ever gracious, Erika was kind and clear. Even a bit apologetic. Not only was the essay way over the word limit, Erika wrote back that she did not understand anything but the introduction and certainly didn’t get why it was titled The Generosity of Being Generative, when I was talking about “fast art.” Oops!

At first I was sad—sad that what I thought was a fascinating concept, something I was excited to share with others, was baffling and opaque to my trusted reader.

Then, I was grateful. What a gift it is to have an outside eye on my work!

Importantly, she gave me feedback that helped me see where I had lost the audience. And as we know, the audience is our raison d’etre as speakers, writers, leaders. We are communicators and if our words are not understood, what’s the point?

If my clients seek input from others when preparing a talk, I coach them to ask for feedback in a particular way so that it is likely to be helpful rather than nit-picky and destructive: “Please let me know if there’s anything you don’t understand.” That’s it. Just ask for clarity. When others reflect back places they got lost, things that don’t make sense, it is the greatest gift.

I took Erika’s feedback, lopped off the body of the essay (I’ll use it in an upcoming post and make sure it’s clear!), and crafted the introduction into its own short piece, Fast Art.

Now, poor Erika, I want to send her everything before I hit, “publish!” I will, of course, send her this for approval.

This week, we consider asking a trusted outside eye, an editor, friend, colleague, to give us feedback on clarity in our communication.

Is there anything you don’t understand? Any transition that doesn’t make sense? Anywhere you got lost?