This provocative headline for a blog post caught my eye when I saw it tweeted yesterday:
Writing is Easy; Editing is Hard
Knowing that writing is not easy at all, I was hooked, so the headline served its purpose.
Problem: The blogger didn’t really mean writing is easy. Typing a bunch of words on a page is easy, he explained.
Typing a bunch of words on a page, however, isn’t writing.
Taking care while crafting your words is what distinguishes a blogger from a mere muser, he said.
That’s not really accurate, either. Many bloggers don’t take much care when putting words into sentence form (while good writers do), and there are many musers out there who write very well.
The blogger – notice I didn’t use the word “writer” there – made some good points about providing readers with valuable content.
One key thing he didn’t do? He never did explain what makes editing hard, proving his point in the process.
Any blog post can be improved by a good editor, as that one could have been.
The Smith Compound 