Even The Best Writers Aren’t Good At Term Paper Editing
You Can Be A Great Writer but a Lousy At Term Paper Editing
Most people can write it’s not hard. Right? Start typing. Create a story. Create a theme. I think it’s harder than most people think. If you know how to write and write well you will move through life a little easier than those who really cannot communicate through writing. Writing is very important. To be a really good writer you need to know how to edit right? Wrong. The best of writers pound the page all day long and they have hordes of people who edit it for them. For multiple books series most writers have continuity editors who keep track of everything. Can you imagine not even having to keep track of the characters you created? If writing in itself is a struggle then writing a term paper is really difficult. Doing term paper editing is darn near impossible.
My cousin Josh is a writer for a major publication. He is a very good writer. I have read most of his articles and the books he has published. He was a terrible student. Really very terrible. There was not a summa cum laude distinction in his past. He went to a junior college where he really struggled. He had a very difficult time writing term papers and I think it took him six years to earn his bachelors degree.
For awhile my family and I thought he had a learning disability. I remember doing some term paper editing for him and I really thought this problem had gotten worse. Words were spelled wrong there was no continuity and I ended up buying him a thesaurus that Christmas. When I would talk to him about it he seemed like he had a real clear idea of what he wanted. His research for the term papers were clear and thorough he just seemed like he couldn’t get it to translate to paper. It never seemed to bother Josh though. Yes he was a terrible college research paper writer and yes his grades were very sup bar but he always did enough to get by.
When Josh graduated from college he got a job editing for a local newspaper. I was sure he would be hitting the unemployment line in a matter of weeks. I had visions of all the terrible term paper editing I had to do for him. When he called me later that week, I cringed. I thought surely he needed some contacts to find a new job. He surprised me, after a week of editing he was given a job as a features writer. I was blown away.
So how did he do it? I don’t even think he knows. One of the content writers called in sick the Monday he started working so he was asked to draft up a couple of basic pieces and do some critical analysis research and fact checking. They loved his notes and his writing. By Friday, when the content writer came back to work, she no longer had a job. He did take the new position on one condition he didn’t want to do any of his own editing.
My cousin Josh got really very lucky and just ran with it. He knew his strengths and weaknesses. He really played up his strengths and found someone to cover his weaknesses. And to think I used to do his term paper editing and now he’s pulling in six figures writing for the biggest publishers and being published in the biggest journals.
