They say that writing and editing are different; they're apples and oranges.
And they say they want to learn to write, not edit.
It's true that I write better about editing than I do about writing. I know it well. (I know writing well, too, but stay with me.)
Writing and editing are NOT different; they're two parts of the same process.
Novelist James Michener said that he was an okay writer, but he was a terrific re-writer (I'm paraphrasing here). He got his story/book/whatever down on paper and then went back and edited, edited, edited. And he won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his first book, ''Tales of the South Pacific,'' a collection of stories he began while he was in the Navy during World War II.
When I was a newspaper man, I wrote quickly, finished it, then went back and fixed it. If I didn't have time to edit, my writing was OK; if I had time to edit, sometimes it was really well done. (I still write this way; I'm just not a full-time newspaper man.)
Like you, I wanted to be a writer, not an editor. But I learned that I have terrific editing skills, and that makes me a better writer.
Write on.
EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com TWITTER: EDITORatWORK
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