In the world of editing, we know that language is everything. It is a never-ending sea of knowledge, experience, and life. We live by how we speak. Our society depends upon written documents and spoken agreements. As an author, presenter, entrepreneur, lawmaker, or storyteller, we live by how we write. If we are a student, we remember by taking notes. Many of us hone our thinking by writing. So, writing is essential to everyone, whether directly or indirectly—though not everyone takes up the difficult but glorious enterprise.

As a French professor for fifteen years, I was keenly aware of the four language skills as I provided opportunities for students to practice their listening, comprehension, reading, and writing skills, all in French, on a regular basis. With a fair balance of these skills, the cumulative result was comfort with their French communication in general. Reading feeds writing, just as listening feeds speaking: language is learned by children via mimicry. So, what feeds your writing communication skills? Indeed, many of us would say this is the key: reading.

Do you listen to reply—or do you listen to hear? This question can be applied to writing. Do you write to have something to say—or do you write to communicate?

Dr. Donald Murray says that there are three stages to writing: pre-writing, writing, and rewriting. Pre-writing is 85 percent of the process. Writing comes in at 1 percent, and rewriting at 14 percent. If pre-writing is 85 percent of the process, what does it entail? As a PhD, I learned through trial and error—and fire—that my best academic writing came after I spent weeks, nay, months or years, digesting research on the topic. Indeed, we may all concur that in today’s buzz world of “fake news,” research and reading should be prioritized before anyone gets on the keyboard.

I walk into a cafe and have two conversation with two different people. One, a business owner, says it takes him ten hours to write one letter because he hems and haws over the words. He is an excellent speaker, but writing is very much a chore in comparison. The other says he has all these ideas but when he goes to write them it’s 1) not linear and 2) gets all complicated.

Writing is a recording; storytelling and writing are how we pass things along. Writing is essential to our communities, history, and sharing forward. What would you say to encourage these individuals to share their ideas? Perhaps the advice for them is the advice you’d give to yourself. Don’t let those ideas get lost. Don’t keep a lid on your own perspective. Get it down, and then craft it—or find someone who can help edit it. Hear the seer within: If we listen to hear, then we may discover our true selves as well.

One key to removing the obstacle—O writing? No, no, I can’t!—is to carve out time to write. The fact that writing is time-consuming is not the only problem. Perhaps the first step is to do your own reading on your topic, see what’s not been said, realize what you have to offer. Talk with people, tell your story. Or maybe you already know you have something valuable to share? So, get the imperfect down on paper—or in a Word doc. You can always forward the paint you threw onto the canvas to a copy editor who listens carefully. Or hone your sloppy draft, work at it, put on your objective outsider cap, and do the rewriting (14 percent) yourself. The writing (1 percent) may be the hardest bit for some, but acknowledging it will be a mess for most any writer is a bit reassuring. But the good news is if you have the pre-writing, which is 85 percent of the work, and if you love what you are doing, and we hope you do, then the pre-writing is easy because it is taking in what you love. In some cases, it is living, surviving, thriving. And that last bit, the 14 percent to polish, that’s the part that can be handed over to a wordsmith.

In 2020, I hope to see all of us spending more time reading, taking in, taking in, and then sharing— not obsessing over the 1 percent, but doing it the best we can. To me, that seems like the most important part of having goals, visions, dreams, creativity. Writing is work. But it is a vehicle. Writing is a craft that improves with practice, copy edits, and actual sharing. By focusing on concision in our writing, we get a better sense of our purpose; we are forced to reevaluate the contents and sequencing of our thoughts. We carve out the essential, like a sculptor extracts the human shape from marble. And when we need an objective eye—to be sure we said what we think we said—there are copy editors who can make that content you wrote shine. If you were guaranteed the successful outcomes you were looking for, wouldn’t you start writing right away?

So if you need a good copy editor—especially for nonfiction, business, or academic writing—I am open for business. Please know that these are also excellent sources for finding copy editors at Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) and ACES: The Society for Editing.