Writers and editors

This article was forwarded to a tech writing mailing list, where our professional experiences are remarkably close to those of our reporting kin:

We writers, while getting the credit on the page, have to deal with a group of folks called editors. Editors are the threshold guardians of the printed word. Their job is to take a writer's vision and bluntly tell him that it's not clear and that he must state it in half the space.

(Ed. note: be careful, laptop jockey, this piece could be dropped...)

Editors are the heroes of the printed word, the kings of the First Amendment.

(Ed. note: well . . . a bit flashy but we don't want to get in the writer's way. keep this line.)

They can also be impossible, short sighted, and cruel . . .

(Ed. note: three of us think these are still compliments, two are unsure.)

. . . And, of course, clueless.

(Ed. note: it's almost unanimous that this is NOT the compliment section.)

Many times a writer looks at his finished work with sadness. He thinks of how much better it could have been had he been allowed to keep certain lofty and majestic lines.

(Ed. note: you mean the lines we put up on the dartboard at the office?)

Of course, I don't think this way about my own editor. Hi Anne!

Hat tip to Bonnie Granat.