Cotton Candy vs Violins

A well turned phrase; contemplative prose, quirky word play, I love writing. Sometimes I can whip out something fairly decent with little or no effort. Then there are days where every word appearing on that stark white page smells of fresh horse caca. I've never liked editors though. Be they a boss correcting my press releases, classmates proofing my papers or an editor of a publication slashing my story to bits. Most writers can imagine the angst a mother would feel if after twenty-nine hours of labor someone in the delivery room were to start plastic surgery to correct her baby's mistakes! To the mother-writer the child is perfect. To the doctor-editor the child's arms are too long; the head too big and there are way too many toes. Gary Kamiya's "Let Us Now Praise Editors" claims we writers have to learn how to be edited and being edited can teach us "about writing, about distance, objectivity and humility". Those of us that have sweated through innumerable revisions and rewrites and have read and reread our works countless times until we finally can sit back with a huge glass of satisfaction and think of ourselves as the next Faulkner or Austen might not be so convinced. But Kamiya says writers must "let go of your attachment to the specific words you've written and open yourself to what you were aiming for." How many times after a bit of gut wrenching, emotionally draining red pen editing have I thought to myself oh yes that is exactly what i was trying to say.

I don't like editors, but I see the value of their work. Constructive criticism can be hard to take, but if we "grow a thick skin in order to have a thinner, more sensitive one" our skills as writers can only excel. A blog's job according to Kamiya is to communicate clearly but not really last. Am I wrong to want the effects of my writing to stay with a person? Is it ego to want my words to occasionally haunt my reader? What will be the role of editor in the world of blogging? There's a veritable universe of folks giving voice to their every piddling; half-baked; unfettered and unedited thought. Should we blog as if no one else is reading? Do I want my words to be cotton candy for the mind? Yummy when first bitten into but quick to dissolve and dissipate on the tongue. Should we be aiming to make our blog work more like that Stradivarius and less like that common microchip? Only time will tell.