Rough Drafts: We All Need Editors

Rough Drafts: We All Need Editors
If we are willing to listen and to accept criticism, a good personal editor can offer us tremendous benefits. Shutterstock
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In the days when I taught literature, history, and Latin to a boatload of homeschoolers, I hired juniors and seniors to grade tests, mark essays, or help with some of the younger students. I also employed one student every year not only to grade essays, but to edit some of my own writing. Sometimes that student and I would read aloud what I had written, looking for mistakes and awkward usage, while at other times she would read silently and alone, writing out suggestions for us to consider together.

On one occasion I was teaching a composition class of seventh- and eighth graders. Standing beside me was a junior in high school—we’ll call her Maggie—who was assisting with the class. I began telling a joke to the students—to this day I can’t remember the joke—when suddenly I felt a whack on my shoulder. I looked over at Maggie, who had delivered that whack. She pursed her lips and shook her head. I laughed, and said to the class, “Well, I guess we won’t be finishing that story.” Later Maggie informed me I had told the joke in her class when she was younger, and she regarded it as inappropriate.

Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.
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