"What most writers need," said long-time New Yorker journalist Lillian Ross, "is not another writer but an editor--someone to talk to about their work, someone capable of giving guidance and help without getting in the writers' way."

If you're lucky, you may have the opportunity to be guided by a professional editor--that is, an experienced wordsmith who communicates with writers honestly and patiently to help them do their best work. Most of us, however, have to recruit our editors from among the ranks of good-hearted amateurs--colleagues, teachers, family members.

Regardless of our editor's experience and professional status, knowing how to work with her and not against her is one of the most valuable lessons an aspiring writer can learn. In his article "Let Us Now Praise Editors" (Salon.com, July 24, 2007), Gary Kamiya says that learning how to be edited is just as important as learning how to edit. It "teaches you a lot about writing," he says, "about distance and objectivity and humility, and ultimately about yourself."

Kamiya's experience as both a writer and an editor has taught him that both jobs are demanding, sometimes exasperating, but in different ways. In a particularly memorable passage, he compares "the exchange between writer and editor" to the "process of growing up":

The act of writing is godlike, omnipotent, infantile. Your piece is a statement delivered from on high, a pronouncement ex cathedra, as egotistical and unchecked as the wail of a baby. Then it goes out into the world, to an editor, and the reality principle rears its ugly head. You are forced as a writer to come to terms with the gap between your idea and your execution--and still more deflating, between your idea and what your idea should have been.

This isn't easy. You have to let go of your attachment to the specific words you've written and open yourself to what you were aiming for. You need enough confidence in yourself to accept constructive criticism, some of which can feel like your internal organs are being more or less gently moved around. More than just about any other non-artistic activity--therapy and, yes, sex are possible exceptions--being edited forces you to see yourself, or at least what you've written, the way others see you. It is a depersonalizing process in some ways, yet having to stand outside yourself deepens you as a person. You need to grow a thick skin in order to have a thinner, more sensitive one.

In a similar spirit, biographer Charles J. Shields says, "You can’t be thin-skinned when a wiser, more experienced writer or editor shows you how to make a sentence stronger, or how to cut the fat from a page."

For Shields, the notion of growing up with an editor is more than a figure of speech. As he tells us in "The Editor of the Breakfast Table," his first editor was his own father, a journalist who wanted him to learn how "to accept being edited . . . because everyone who succeeds as a writer gets edited."

Both Kamiya and Shields remind us that a demanding yet sympathetic editor (teacher, colleague, parent, or professional) deserves our gratitude. Shields says, "Someone taking the time to give you the benefit of their expertise isn’t (as I thought my father was doing) finding fault with you, or proving that you’re not a good writer. It’s a rite of passage into the profession. Be glad--you’re on your way."

In Kamiya's words, "Someone is noticing. Someone is reading. Someone cares."

More About Editing:

• "The Editor of the Breakfast Table," by Charles J. Shields
• Lillian Ross on Helpful Editors
• Wolcott Gibbs's Theory and Practice of Editing