Editing: A Short, Short Post

I've been doing a few freelance editing jobs this week. They're keeping me busy (oh, boy, are they keeping me busy!), but there's something I find deeply satisfying about revising someone else's writing. It's lovely to take a knotted, dense, nearly meaningless sentence and force it to unfurl itself into clarity. I enjoy making it possible for a reader to see through grammatical snarls and into what it is the writer really means.

It's tricky work, and tiring, but I love helping others slip into the flow and clarity necessary to expressing themselves. The trick isn't to make the writer sound like me or any other "good" writer: it's to help them sound just exactly like themselves.