Last week, Nicola responded to the following question. Today it’s my turn.

“What is your motivation for starting Sterling Editing? You have successful writing and corporate careers … why coach and edit others? I’m genuinely curious — I’m a writer myself and working on creativity coaching certification but wondering about the wisdom of distracting myself from my own creative work by helping others. – Alison, via our FAQ page”

I’m a writer. It’s an essential part of my identity. Writing has brought me struggle, self-doubt, self-worth, profound change, connection to others, those astonishing moments when everything clicks and I understand something fundamental about being human, and more pure joy than I ever expected. Like Nicola, for me it’s all about the joy.

I think people become writers as a result of deliberate choice and much work and a certain willingness to embrace extreme uncertainty; I think this becoming is constant, and is the difference between writers and people who have written, or people who want to write. I’ve become a writer with other people’s help: with good teaching, with compassionate ruthless feedback, with the support of people who love me, with the example of others’ success to inspire or enrage me into going back to the story and trying again, and again, until the work is right.

Writing is learned through practice, just like martial arts or cooking or brain surgery or any other transformational skill. It’s not just something one can learn from a book or a website or watching someone else do it while you eat pizza. If you want to become more skilled, you need the hands-on feedback of someone with more skill than you; in this way, all writers learn from each other. I do too: but I’m expert now, sensei, and like a martial arts sensei the learning I do is different from the student in the brand new gi or the mid-rank blue belt. I learn by reading what my betters write, and what they say about their work; by conversation with my peers; by constant practice; and by helping other people learn what I already know.

Practice is an individual path, but not a solo journey. It gives me joy to learn and grow; it gives me joy to help other people do it too, as I believe it pleased many who helped me. It becomes a journey we take together. And it’s exciting for me, because by helping others I end up going deeper and deeper into my own writing, my own practice. I learn too.

I came across an article recently in which someone implied that in-house editors really care about the books, whereas freelance editors are just doing a job. Feh. I don’t speak for all independent editors, but I certainly speak for myself: I care a great deal about the books and stories I edit, and even more than that, I care about the writers that I help. I care that they have the possibility of being better writers because I gave them something — a tool, a technique, a realization about their work or themselves — they didn’t have before. I care that they are farther on their journey, and that perhaps something I’ve done will help them visit one of the places I’ve been — the struggle, the change, the connection and especially the joy. Especially that.

Posted by: Kelley