Modern word processors are a godsend, but the ease of editing presents a pitfall. In my work as a developmental editor, I’ve noticed that many of my clients blur the following concepts when working collaboratively:

• the text — the arrangement of works that makes up the piece arrangement
• the document — the piece captured on paper or screen
• the file — the electronic container for the document

That’s abstract, so here’s an example.

A nonprofit team I worked with collaborate on grant proposals. Program managers, senior organization leaders, and financial analysts contribute data and descriptive text to the final product.

Their process went like this:

The person responsible for filing the submission creates a Microsoft Word document with outlines and draft-level information and sends that document to four other people by email.

At this point, the team has:

• No complete version of a text
• One document
• Six files: the one on the original person’s hard drive and 5 more attached to emails

Each person downloads the file, makes additions using the Track Changes feature of Word, and emails that new Microsoft Word document to the entire group or adds it to a shared drive.

The documents and files multiply like rabbits! 

On the program director’s computer, for example, there is:

• The file downloaded from the email, which contains a document
• The file still attached to the email, which contains the same document
• The file which contains the edited document, perhaps indicated by her initials appended to its name
• The file attached to the email she circulates, containing that edited document

Now multiply that times FIVE.

The team now has 5 different documents (versions of the piece) and dozens of files.

And no coherent arrangement of words yet exists.

While comments and even more drafts fly back and forth on email, the first writer starts plopping all of this content back into his original file, cutting and pasting his way to another document. In the confusion, sometimes people work on or circulate the wrong file, leading to omissions and lost content.

This “process” repeats for one or more cycles of editing, this time with each person using Track Changes to edit other people’s sentences.

Observing the way my client handled collaborative writing, I thought, “No wonder so many people say they hate writing!”

To be sure, writing can be time-consuming and frustrating. But it really doesn’t need to be that complicated.

Your underlying process should be this:

1. Dress the information in words. (“Write it.”)
2. Capture a single, permanent form for those words. (“Type it up.”)
3. Designate one official master computer file. (“Store it.”)

Here’s the process I’ve seen in well-oiled corporate publishing departments:

Option 1 — Low-tech: Each person shares data and information, in whatever format works, and delivers it to the primary writer. The primary writer creates a single draft and circulates it to the others for review and commentary. People make their suggestions and corrections as separate messages — no Track Changes yet! This can even happen on paper. The writer prepares a final document, a single person edits using Track Changes, and the writer addresses those edits.

Option 2 — High-tech: Collaborators share a single file in an application like Google Docs or Quip. This takes some getting used to. I felt uncomfortable myself the first time I worked with people like this until something shifted. My job as the developmental editor got much easier when I stopped thinking of the Google Doc as the document and begin conceiving of it as messy notebook, a repository where ideas get pulled together before “writing” happens.

In word processing tools like those, authors add, subtract, and comment to their hearts’ content in one file. Some applications allow contributors to view revisions and salvage deleted passages. When the content reaches the stage where the messages are clear, the arguments make sense, and the story flows, the accountable writer can create a document and then launch the editing process.

The key to remember: The purpose of writing — any writing — is to put together an arrangement of words that leads people to make sense of the chosen ideas, information, and data. Software tools should help minimize the time and attention spent on the physical media and free everyone involved to concentrate on the content. If that’s not what’s happening, revisit the process.

The post Collaborative Writing Can Lead to Chaos. Here’s How to Get It Under Control. appeared first on Barbara Ruth Saunders.

In my work as a developmental editor, I’ve noticed business writing sometimes suffers from the same problem as sappy poems. My clients face this problem because all writers face it; it’s a function of how the human mind works. Accounting for this habit of mind — through revision — is one of the core skills it takes to write pieces other people want to read.

First, bring to mind something that happened today, or yesterday. If you had a fight with your partner, maybe you remember the grating, sarcastic tone of voice they used — or you used. If you barely avoided a car accident, you might feel a rush of adrenaline all over again. If your team won the championship, perhaps you can close your eyes and replay that final shot like a movie. You probably have vivid sensory memories about the incident.

Now, think of something from the past you daydream about often. It might be that horrible breakup that inspired you to write a marble composition book full of corny poems. It could be the 100th birthday party for your beloved grandmother. Try to see in your mind’s eye, the people, what they were wearing, the rooms you were in.

In both of those cases, those events feel alive. Although you undoubtedly don’t remember exactly what happened, sensory detail is encoded in your memory. And you enhance the memory every time you retrieve it, building a web of layered associations that grows thicker every time you bring the scene to mind.

If you write an account of one of these events, the first draft will almost certainly fail capture the sensory or emotional detail in words. Instead, what you write will be, in essence, reminders — triggers for your memory and network of associations.

Readers can’t be reminded of an experience they didn’t go through or a thought they never had. You have to find words that evoke something for the reader.

Coming from the teenager, this imprecise use of language might look like: “I love your face/It makes my heart race.” This line doesn’t come close to making a reader empathize with the intense, hormone-juiced emotions of a first love.

For business writing clients, the equivalent mistake is the use of jargon, shorthand for concepts that the writer understands but the reader might not. Sometimes, a writer will use jargon that colleagues would understand, but I’ve also seen people use turns of phrase unique to them. For example, I was helping a business owner develop web content. In all his draft copy, he advised his clients not to “leave their business on autopilot.”

After talking to him and studying his business, I got the gist of what he meant: He wanted to help entrepreneurs who were uncomfortable talking about money, and therefore not deliberate in their financial choices. He was almost certain not to connect with the very people who most needed his services.

“Autopilot” was like, “I love your face/It makes my heart race.” There’s not enough meaning in the phrase for the prospective client to resonate with.

How does a writer move away from jotting down memory triggers and begin finding language that can transmit meaning to someone else?

It’s all in the revision.

Jotting down the memory triggers isn’t wrong. It’s actually the first step. You write privately.

The next step is to wrap what you know or remember in specific, evocative words that evoke emotion or memory in readers.

Here are two tips for doing that:

1. Spell it out. I helped the consultant use words and describe scenarios that more explicitly named his clients’ pain, such as, “You’re afraid to retire, because you don’t want your children fighting over the business.” That led organically to more compelling descriptions of his credentials, which consisted of specific expertise in counseling founders of privately-held companies. And then, of course, the solution: “Don’t just let things run their course. I can help you navigate these uncomfortable situations and protect your assets.”
2. Metaphors are most powerful when they have three components: sensory, emotional, and intellectual. “Autopilot” is a metaphor. It likens the way a person might operate a business to a pilot who delegates part of the job of flying a plane to a computerized system. It refers to something a reader has probably heard of and understands intellectually. Few people will have a sense association with autopilot; you don’t visualize one when you hear the word. And there’s no appropriate emotional component either. (If anything, autopilot might even conjure a positive emotion, not a negative one; autopilot usually works, after all.) Imagine if, instead, this author had said these business owners operated their businesses like zombies.

If that sounds like a lot of work, well, sometimes it is. Your audiences will appreciate your efforts. A class, writing group, developmental editor, or beta readers can help along the way.

By expressing your ideas with more precision, using descriptive, evocative language your reader can understand, you will graduate from cryptic, corny poet to convincing author.

The post How Experts Who Use Too Much Jargon Are Like Corny Adolescent Poets appeared first on Barbara Ruth Saunders.

As a developmental editor, I get potential clients at all stages of their writing projects. Sometimes a person has a topic and great ideas for a piece of content but hasn’t started writing. Those authors are often professionals or consultants writing about an area of practical expertise. Memoirists and other nonfiction authors often have an urgent message or tale captured in a complete manuscript that needs polishing, tightening, or cutting to publishable length.

People sometimes seek an editor after their work has been rejected by a publisher — or even returned for fixing by communications staff editing the company blog.

If there is no manuscript, I sit down with the author and attempt to craft an outline, mind map, or other kind of roadmap they can use to get started. The tools help address the following planning questions:

• What do you hope to accomplish with this piece of writing?
• How are you going to approach that communication?
• What are the things you plan to say?

For a finished project, I introduce the same organizational tools as the basis for evaluation of the existing content. The questions are slightly different:

• What was this piece of writing intended to do?
• Has the vision changed through the writing?
• What does it actually do?
• What needs to be added, modified, or changed to align this manuscript with your current goal?

After those questions are answered, we move to technical matters related to the format or genre:

• If this is an op-ed, does it include a “to be sure” paragraph?
• If this is a piece of instructional content — a manual or how-to book — are the steps to the process in the right order? Is supplemental conceptual and reference information handled consistently?
• If this is a personal essay, is there an epiphany?
• If this is a memoir, is there a narrative arc or just a series of anecdotes? Does the type of narrative you used fit the kind of story you’re telling?

At this point, the responses fall into one of three categories:

Sometimes, given tools, concepts, and a little brainstorming support, the author runs with it and comes up with a structure on their own.

At other times, we brainstorm a complete map together, and the author executes it, tinkering with the organization as the evolving content demands.

Then there are the people who are stumped, usually because they did not anticipate how big a shift it is from generating ideas, telling stories, or making arguments to evaluating their written work.

If the project is at an early stage, the would-be author might just be unable to settle on a main point or a genre, so the project starts and stops over and over again with different angles.

When the author has generated a lot of content, the problem looks different. They have trouble committing to any approach to revision.

Neither one of those problems is insurmountable. Given time and desire, all of these authors could probably learn to write a project that does its job. But not every author has time and desire.

Learning how to see structure can be a long learning curve. If there’s a book contract in your hand with a deadline six months from now, you may not be able to pick up the know-how in time to finish the project. The same is true if you need to address a public relations crisis with a letter to the editor.

If you’re under time pressure, a ghostwriter can help. Working with a good ghostwriter can double as a class. Take note of the questions they ask. As you review the drafts they produce, observe the evolutionary progress as the text takes shape.

Wanting to publish isn’t the same as wanting to write. If you read advice directed at writers, a lot of it focuses on bypassing perfectionism to get the material out. That’s because experienced writers are sometimes paralyzed by impossible standards and an inner critic who jumps the gun on early drafts.

Less experienced writers can have the reverse problem. The underdeveloped (and defensive) inner critic wants to leap from drafting to polishing. In the words of journalism professor Gerald Grow, “Most people write when they should be thinking and edit when they should be revising.” Analysis is as much a part of the process as art or intuition, and if you aren’t able to review your work critically, achieving the kind of quality you want will be impossible.

If you can’t yet do that — or don’t really want to, a ghostwriter can help. My job as a developmental editor is to point you to the right questions. To produce something other people will want to read, you either have to take on a large number of creative decisions and act on them or have someone do that for you.

I’m a romantic! I’d love to see you write it yourself. But if your story or message is worth sharing, don’t let your disinterest in the more painful parts of writing keep you from making communication happen.

The post How to View Your Writing Project Like a Developmental Editor appeared first on Barbara Ruth Saunders.

“You should write a book!” People said. “I’d buy it.”

But he had no idea how to write a book and figured learning how would consume more time than he had to spare. He turned to a ghostwriting firm that advertised online.

The ghostwriting firm advertised it can find a professional writer to produce a 225-page book from content the author supplies in three or four hours of interviews; that the author can use the book as a business calling card; and that the book can be a significant source of revenue. Like so many things that sound too good to be true … it isn’t true.

Most ghostwriting firms promoting themselves that way earn their money by farming out the writing at low pay to inexperienced writers, and then upselling self-publishing services to the author.

There are really 3 types of legitimate, effective arrangements called “ghostwriting.”

A writer does all of the writing and the author puts their name on it. For example, a company might hire a writer to create the voice of the business and post work to a blog under an executive’s name.

The ghostwriter helps the author generate raw content and articulate ideas, then executes in the chosen format. Many of the best business books are written that way. So are many celebrity autobiographies and memoirs about extraordinary experiences.

The author provides mature content in one format and the ghostwriter shapes it into another. Imagine a psychotherapist wants to create a comprehensive web site about a method of treatment she’s invented. She has hundreds of pages of case notes, monographs published in scientific journals, and a master’s thesis, but neither the time nor the inclination to learn how to write web content.

What differentiates all three of those examples from the wishful thinking of the would-be author I began with? These authors make time and take responsibility.

If you are publishing as the spokesperson for collective wisdom, like many organizational leaders, delegating the entire writing process can make sense. However, if you’re promoting your own ideas, which you use as the basis for your professional practice, it’s up to you to own those ideas.

You’re not a thought leader if you outsource the thinking.

Even if you use a ghostwriter, producing high-quality writing is an intensive process. Find a reputable ghostwriter who will be honest with you about what’s required. Be prepared to articulate your thoughts, review drafts, and field questions. It takes time — from you — to get a writer oriented to a body of knowledge and perspective you formed over decades.

Aside from saving you money, writing it yourself may prove worth your effort. You could team up with a writing partner or coauthor, a colleague who shares your expertise but is a better writer. (Note that in some fields, professional ethics dictate that such contributors be named.) You could also hire a developmental editor to create roadmaps for your project or a writing coach to support your work plan.

Don’t ghost your readers! And don’t cheat yourself out of the opportunity to truly share what you know.

Still thinking about hiring a ghostwriter? Read this next.

The post Thinking About Hiring a Ghostwriter? Read This First. appeared first on Barbara Ruth Saunders.

“Better to get a smart writer to write a piece and have an expert verify the accuracy, than have the expert write it and try to edit afterwards. An expert’s badly written piece basically has to be rewritten from scratch,” said a trade magazine editor.

“We tried hiring PhDs, but you’d be surprised how many of them can’t write. I can usually get smart writers up to speed well enough on the substantive content, but teaching somebody to write on the job just doesn’t work,” said the CEO of a consulting firm specializing in research.

And then there are the numerous people with advanced degrees who have told me, “We did not learn how to write in my program. If anything, my graduate program ruined my writing.”

What gives?

These writers aren’t having trouble with mechanics. They are not the people targeted in the plethora of articles about not mixing up “their,” “they’re,” and “there.”

These writers are struggling because they have been taught not to claim any authority. Following the academic models they’ve learned, they hedge, justify, beat around the bush, and dispense hypotheticals without saying clearly and explicitly what they think. And business writing doesn’t work without the voice of authority.

There’s a tremendous need in business for people who have formal skills in research, analysis, and evaluating evidence, and the ability to stake a position in writing. How can you get comfortable taking a stand on paper, so you can step into that gap?

Consider the following:

1. Re-read your favorite nonfiction books as a writer. Notice how the authors earn your trust, and the techniques they use to shift from giving evidence to interpreting that evidence and declaring an opinion.
2. Take an instructor-led journalism or creative writing class. In a class, you will learn alternatives to writing as if you were laying out a proof. Instead, you will be shown how to use stories, drama, sound, and emotion — features every bit as important in business writing as in literature or entertainment.
3. Start or join a writing group. Break the habit of writing for a professor whose job is to judge whether you know what you should know. Test your work on readers with different taste, knowledge, and expectations.
4. Hire a professional editor or coach. A experienced professional can identify your strengths and troubleshoot your work products, your process, or both, supporting you on a self-directed course of improvement.

Professional success today depends more than ever on critical and creative thinking, rather than the ability to carry out routine procedures. Yet people trained for thinking can have a difficult time applying those skills in ways employers value — especially writing.

For many of us, school failed to deliver the right training, but it’s never too late to learn.

The post Why Highly Educated People May Struggle When Writing for Business appeared first on Barbara Ruth Saunders.

“I know how to write, but I don’t have time.”

Many busy people hire writers to help them with projects. That makes sense if you are a presidential candidate or CEO of a major corporation, and you need to produce a full-length book. But if you are a professional sharing your expertise in a blog post, five-page paper, or your website, you will have the greatest influence on readers if you can reveal how you think. Displaying the workings of your mind can help you win the ideal job or consulting clients, impress colleagues, or build a brand beyond your industry.

The sense that you lack time to write often indicates a deeper problem: lack of time to think. When that’s the case, you will not save time by hiring someone. If you cannot communicate your ideas clearly to the writer you hire, you will waste a lot of time and money in circular conversations and major revisions. Invest time in reflection, and you may find that you don’t need a writer; an editor or proofreader may be enough.

“I don’t know what to say.”

If you have nothing to say, why are you writing? The answer to that question points you to the remedy. I find that my clients have plenty to say, but they have trouble selecting from an abundance of data and information. It is a frustrating exercise to try to write about a topic without an audience to address, a point to make, and a goal. The more knowledgeable you are, the more frustrating it is.

Before attempting to compose a draft, jot down your intentions. They might be as mundane as, “My manager wants every sales engineer in the group to write one blog a quarter to justify the budget to her manager.” Imagine a specific person who will read your piece. What do you want them to think, feel, or do? Then use a mind map, an outline, or just clusters of unrefined sentences to come of with a plan of attack.

“I’m not a writer.”

Published material faces competition from a multitude of sources. You may fear it takes dazzling writing to get the attention of your desired audience. That belief has even created a “grey market.” A former colleague of mine works as a confidential ghostwriter for full-time marketing copywriters! Remember that while those dazzling writers were developing their writing chops, you were studying, practicing, and building relationships in your discipline. What a writer can learn through journalistic research can’t compare with reports from your informed analysis and work experience.

If there’s a critical voice in your head that taunts, “You aren’t a writer,” ask yourself what that means. Some excellent writers discount their talents simply because they are bad spellers. Other professionals are disappointed to find their educational experiences failed to provide the skills to write for business or publication. Maybe you learned to write one way for your high school English teacher and another for your thesis advisor and now you are lost. Once you know what “not a writer” means, you can find a solution. Take a short course in the kind of writing you want to do. Engage a developmental editor. Maybe all you need is to read a few good models and practice, practice, practice.

You are more than a vessel for information who needs a “creative” person to translate what you have to share. Your voice is unique — and it matters.

The post Three Surprising Reasons to Write It Yourself appeared first on Barbara Ruth Saunders.

At a kick-off meeting for a 20-page paper project, a program manager in a professional services firm warned that the team should expect to churn through 30-40 drafts. A nonprofit vice-president said she’d alerted managers in four agency departments they should allocate 10 percent of their time over the next four months to assembling a grant proposal.

How could either scenario be possible?

The professional services company expected me to act as note taker and grammarian. The writing process was as follows: A team of seven people would sit in a room for several hours a week, attempting to compose the paper sentence by sentence from beginning to end. It took about a dozen drafts before a basic conceptual framework emerged. They did not know the importance of planning before writing.

The nonprofit organization ignored the structure supplied by the grant application itself; in weekly meetings, every invited staff member in every department reopened disagreements about program design, budget, and operations rather than starting from the specific questions in front of them. What they expected from a hired writer was someone who could find the magic words to create sense from their data dumps. Of course, this was nonsense. No writer could make a usable document from such contentious conversations. This team, too, needed an entirely different approach.

As a developmental editor, I’m always looking out for simple ways to explain how to avoid these grueling exercises. I found some examples unexpectedly in historian Joseph Ellis’ entertaining books about the birth of the United States. His descriptions of how the founding fathers wrote are wonderful case studies in team-writing best practices.

Option 1: Appoint a lead writer to produce the draft, and then let people review. As a kid, I imagined that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in a burst of inspiration. Actually, it was a team project. The Second Continental Congress appointed a “Committee of Five,” including Jefferson, who was chosen to compose the public announcement of a prior decision to separate from Great Britain. Jefferson drafted the document and submitted it for review and debate, first by the committee, and then by the whole congress.

When to use this strategy:

• A member of your team has the time, skill, and willingness to complete a draft.
• The team trusts that the writer understands the group’s collective view, and the writer is comfortable deferring to the group for the final draft.

Option 2: Assign different sections to different authors. After the U.S. Constitution was written, John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton wrote a series of 85 essays aimed at persuading the people of the state of New York to ratify it. The first paper provided a list of six topics the authors intended to cover. They published the articles in New York newspapers under the name “Publius.” Today, the collection is known as the Federalist Papers.

When to use this strategy:

• Different sections or passages of the final product naturally call for different styles. For example, a program manager could write a persuasive executive summary for a proposal and a business analyst write the detailed financial planning section.
• You are willing to appoint or hire an editor to ensure cohesion. An editor might devise a template for each writer to follow. Or they might simply write an introduction, conclusion, and connecting text to ease the reader’s journey from one section to the next.

Option 3: Hire a professional writer, editor, or ghostwriter.

George Washington contemplated stepping down after his first term as president, and he asked James Madison to help him articulate his vision for the future of the American enterprise. Washington was convinced to remain in office for another four years. By the end of that second term, he and Madison had had a philosophical parting of the ways. Washington pressed Alexander Hamilton into service to revise Madison’s draft, and Washington made careful edits before the farewell address was released to the press.

When to use this strategy:

• No one on the team has the writing skills to produce the content that’s needed. For example, the learning curve for responding to a request-for-proposal (RFP) for a competitive federal contract might be very steep. There are experienced writers who specialize in those kinds of proposals.
• You need to combine the work of multiple contributors into a single voice.
• It’s counterintuitive, but if you hire a writer who’s not on your team, you need more clarity about the ideas, not less. Most good writers can generate logically sound copy based on any number of hypothetical concepts or angles. Your document should capture your team’s perspective, not the writer’s.

If you do not select one of those strategies deliberately, your project may fall into one anyway — after you have wasted a lot of time and experienced a lot of unnecessary frustration. A strong personality grabs the reins and writes a draft. Multiple contributors cobble together something, which may or may not achieve the quality you want. Often, the project will stall, and you bring in a writer or editor for an expensive rush job.

So, follow the examples of our founding fathers! Adopt a team writing process that brings focus, encourages responsibility for the formulation of ideas, and results in clear, quality text.

The post Writing on a Team: Lessons from the Founding Fathers appeared first on Barbara Ruth Saunders.

You know you need a review you can trust, but you’re leery because of some bad experiences.

I’ve been there! Every writer has.

You want your friend to scan for typos, and she rips apart your whole argument.

You want your colleague to tell you if the piece strikes the right tone, and he nitpicks about the Oxford comma.

You want your spouse to tell you if you’ve made your point, and she tells you she thinks you should add more humor or suggests an entirely different topic.

Of course, there’s, “That’s great!” which is kind but not particularly helpful.

Every once in a while, you get a reaction that is truly bizarre. A writing group peer once told me that a nonfiction essay I was proud of was “too realistic and therefore dangerous because people might believe what you say without question.”

What do you do with something like that? And what gives?

Consider how you watch your favorite television show. You let yourself get involved in the story without thinking about all that went into it. You may notice a virtuoso performance from a favorite actor, but you don’t pay deliberate attention to the writing, the acting, the direction, the art direction, the sound effects, and the camera work.

Trained editors understand that writing, too, has a lot of moving parts. That’s why we tend to specialize. Some give guidance on overall structure. Others focus on the use of language. Still others dig into the logical flow of a manuscript, such as the order of paragraphs and passages or, in fiction, whether a subplot adds to or distracts from the momentum of the story.

Here are a few tips to get the kind of review you’re looking for:

1. Identify what you need. Hint: This usually corresponds with your stage in the writing process.

If you have a rough draft, you may need someone who can verify that you’ve chosen a meaningful scope and effectively addressed the intended audience. A later-stage manuscript might benefit from a reviewer who can tell you if the ideas flow and suggest strategic additions or deletions. Still later, you may need a line-by-line edit that ensures your style is consistent, you have defined your terms, and there are no major errors of fact that set off alarms.

Or maybe this baby really is ready for posting to your blog or submitting to a publication as soon as somebody proofreads it!

2. Select the right reviewer(s) and understand their strengths. 

I’ve been in a lot of writing critique groups over the past 20 years. And I’ve observed that even writers, who are familiar with the editing process, will zone in on the things they’re strongest at. When asked broadly for “feedback on my piece,” poets often leap to word choice, journalists to the structure, and creative prose writers to the mood. (The eagle eye for grammatical errors and typos seems randomly distributed!)

If your colleagues aren’t writers, they undoubtedly still have distinct strengths and preferences as readers. That very analytical, detail-oriented project manager you work with may be great at noticing where you made confusing leaps of logic. That theater-addicted friend probably has a good ear. Ask her for help when you’re stumped on awkward sentences. Your wife the voracious reader of anything and everything might be wonderful at pinpointing seemingly tiny fixes that correct deep structural problems.

3. Communicate exactly what you want.

Explicitly direct the reviewer’s attention to the level of the piece you want them to evaluate.

“Can you give this a second pair of eyes?” is not specific enough. The reviewer won’t know whether you want a copyedit, an overall reaction, or something in between.

“I’m not sure if this flows right. What do you think?” is a little better. Now, the reviewer knows you’re looking for something about the sense of the piece.

Even better: “Do those case studies help make the point or, or are they distracting?”

In some cases, you might want to tell them explicitly what not to focus on as well. For example, “Don’t worry about looking for typos. My assistant’s going to proofread this. What I want to know from you is if those case studies work here.” Alternatively, “I need to submit this tomorrow! Can you take a quick look to make sure I’ve been consistent with those acronyms?”

Finally, recognize the limitations of review. No reader or editor can completely eliminate your sense of feeling exposed. The more you care about your project, the less anyone can do to reassure you that your work is good enough. If you are a new writer, take a risk! You’ll learn from your readers’ responses.

If you’ve been writing for a while, you may be facing a different challenge: The more advanced a writer you become, the less casual reviewers can do to help achieve your own standards. If you feel like you’ve followed all the rules you know and are stumped at how to make your piece better, seek a partnership, either with a professional (such as a coach or an editor) or with a colleague or who shares your dedication to the writing craft.

The post How to Get Useful Peer Reviews appeared first on Barbara Ruth Saunders.