Writing is Breathing

"You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up around people who make you hold your breath." -- Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird

I read this today in a chapter about finding one or two people you can rely on to read your work before you submit it to an agent or editor. She was talking about writers not being able to fill the emptiness that writing satisfies if the people who do the first reads of their work criticize just to be mean and not to offer constructive advice.

I worked for a couple of editors early in my newspaper career who made me hold my breath every time I turned something in until they read it and offered their typical harsh words instead of useful guidance.

I once quit a job that I would have liked except for the fact that my editor would find something wrong with every single thing I wrote and ask for the impossible -- facts that were not available or interviews that couldn't be gotten. You never knew what kind of mood she was going to be in whenever you asked the simplest of questions. She could be nice one minute and rip your head off over nothing in the next minute.

But most of the time, I've worked for great editors. These were editors who set me loose to do my own thing, but pointed me in the right direction whenever they saw me headed down a misguided course or offered tips to help me connect point A to point B and C or did something as simple as read my lead sentence and nut graph to tell me if it worked or not.

They let me know what I was doing right and what areas of my writing needed more attention. I'm a better reporter and writer, because of that kind of advice. I tend to rebel when people make me miserable.

So, now that I've finished my first big writing project that isn't part of my full-time gig, I have to identify a couple of people who can read it and give me great feedback, whether I like it or not. Hopefully, these will be people who fill my writing cup, rather than smash it to pieces.