Column: Something About Nothing, by Julie Seedorf

I this to do it. Maybe wrong it. Whatever, not to, be a sentence.

Did you catch that? The above sentences do not make sense. I did that on purpose to test the editors.

What I write and the finished product that goes into the newspaper or into my books are not always the same. Writers need editors, at least this writer needs editors. Editors make writers look good.

I am the first to admit that I am grammar-challenged and comma-challenged. I am the first to admit I use verbs and adverbs in places where they do not belong. I probably just said that wrong, too.

I use words in my sentences that do not need to be there when explaining something. I am great at adding a but or a than or a that or an and. I use many extra words. Editors edit them out.

Editors also catch mistakes that writers make with the details such as the correct name of places or the correct spelling of places. They correct people’s names. Editor’s remove commas and apostrophes and put italics where they are needed. Editors pop in quotation marks where the writer forgot to put them while they were furiously getting their ideas on paper.

As a writer I always proofread what I write. I miss things. I can read things over time and time again and miss things. I think it has something to do with familiarity of the written word that came out of my brain. Editors catch that.

Writers rely on editors. When writing my books I can’t always see the forest for the trees because I am too close to the subject. I get carried away. An editor pulls me back and sees what I need to change when it comes to story. Do the characters need more background? Did I forget a detail or change something later in the book that doesn’t match what I wrote earlier?

Writing a column and writing human interest stories for newspapers are no exception. There are times my brain and my hand do not match up and I make mistakes. There are times I do not catch those mistakes. Recently I made a glaring mistake when doing a human-interest story. I got the name of the location wrong.

I didn’t do it on purpose. I knew where I was at, but when I wrote the story another place intruded on my brain and I got it wrong.

All writers get something wrong at some time or place. We have to have thick skins when it comes to criticism. Book reviews can be brutal. Having said that, a writer can always learn something from criticism if it is done constructively.

We as writers and our editors do everything possible to get things right. We do not intentionally get things wrong. What we ask when that happens is to bring it to our attention and we will correct it. We will in print, make the correction so people are aware that something was wrong. We, as writers, write human-interest stories, or, at least in my case, because we want to bring help to a cause, recognition to people that deserve it. We take our time to learn, to write the story and many times we put our heart in that story because we want to reach out to people in a good way. Do we make mistakes? Yes, because we are human.

As writers, editors help us because when we write with our heart we miss things. As much as we want to be correct we miss things. We get caught up in the telling of the story and not caught up in the correctness of our wording, our grammar or our comma’s. Right or wrong, that is the way it is.

If we make a mistake on a story, tell us. We will fix it. We want things to be correct and right. It doesn’t help to publicly zing us in the newspaper or in the media for an honest mistake. Writers, though having a thick skin, have feelings, too, especially when trying to do something good for someone or an organization.

We live in a society today where we are quick to judge, quick to criticize and short on forgiveness in flaws of others. Media is sometimes brutal on their readers, but readers can also be brutal to the media. Does tit for tat get us anywhere except on a merry-go-round of blame leading to a less forgiving world.

Thank you to all of my editors that — I mean, who — put up with my mistakes, correct my flaws and do it with such finesse that they make me a better writer and grateful for their critique.

Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s column appears every Monday. Send email to her at thecolumn@bevcomm.net. Her Facebook page is www.facebook.com/sprinklednotes.