Blog 15: Working with Writers

Blog 15: Working with Writers

Working with writers can be a treacherous adventure. There is a balance between offering suggestions and belittling the writers. As a Writing Center tutor, I have come to the cross-section of suggesting and belittling many times, and it is a fine line to balance as an editor. For this assignment, I reviewed one of my friend’s English 1010 literature reviews. I began by first editing the paper with my comments and then had a conversation with the writer. I learned that by making each editing experience a teaching experience, we can easily balance the line between offering suggestions and belittling writers.

The focus on this paper was solely on wordiness and comma splices which made the process easier than if I had needed to restructure the paper. Luckily the comma edits were easy to insert and mark. The wordiness of the paper was a harder error, but by using the lessons from When Words Collide, I was able to make the paper much more concise. By making the paper concise, the writer was then able to focus on developing content rather than making the page limit.

When I met with the writer in person, I made sure to gently approach the larger edits and focused on using the paper as a learning experience rather than a lecture. Because writers can be sensitive, I wanted to make sure that she was comfortable and not offended. When I talked to the writer, I began by explaining my comma edits and pulled up a few of her examples. Luckily, she quickly caught on, so I moved onto my other concern: wordiness. This was a harder topic to approach because many times writers feel as if their long-winded phrases and sentences are necessary to get the point across. To mentally prepare for arguments, I organized a few responses to some of the wordy phrases that were in the paper. Then, when I brought up a specific phrase or sentence to the writer, I said, “This phrase/sentence was wordy because” and inserted the reason. The reasons included explanation as well as examples. In many of these edits, I provided her with a few options that could make the phrase or sentence shorter so that I could get the point across without taking away the voice, something I feel is very important to preserve.

From this experience, I further learned the importance of being tactful when dealing with writers. In this paper, there were a lot of punctuation mistakes, and I did not want the writer to feel as if she were incompetent. Likewise, when I presented my edits on wordiness, I had to be careful to not simply rewrite her paper and change the voice to my own. By teaching the concepts and providing multiple options to keep her own voice, I was able to present all of my edits in a tactful way without offending the writer.

Additionally, I learned a few new skills when I am writing the edits. For example, instead of editing with a hard copy of the paper, I made comments with Google Docs. This saved paper and still allowed the writer to make the changes. I was wary of using the tracking changes feature in Word because I didn’t want the writer to take my edits and turn the paper in for a better grade with my edits. Using Google Docs comments allowed me to make my edits without the writer getting credit for my edits. In this situation, the writer was able to learn a few things meaning I would have less edits if I were to review their paper in the future.

Overall, this was a great experience for me. As a Writing Center tutor, I review papers all day long, but thinking about the paper as more of an editor than a tutor and editing before the conversation helped the process go faster. In the end, tact was the key component to making it the best experience for both the writer and myself.