Welcome to my newsletter! Thanks for coming along on this journey with me as I discover precisely what shape this thing wants to take.

Let me give you a quick tour of this emerging shared space.

Ultreia et suseia!

Last week we started exploring the value of our efforts on the creative way as writers and editors. These thoughts were first inspired by this post on LinkedIn by a fellow editor. In part one we explored two ideas:

Today I’ll tackle a third idea:

An underlying goal here is to explore our presumption that publication is the end goal of writing (unpacked last week). Our primary purpose is to discover a healthier perspective that balances and esteems all the stages of the writing journey.

Before I continue, I want to dedicate this essay to all of the writers I’ve had the joy to know and to work with—along with the ones I have yet to meet. It is a persistent delight to encounter people who are in love with words and connection. I feel privileged to pursue my livelihood alongside writers passionate about making a difference, and who are also wise and brave enough to slow down and relish the process.

Successful communication, as society usually employs the idea, is an end, not a means. It implies having gotten the point across. This often entails being agreed with or obeyed, but it might simply mean being heard or even having had an argument. Like so many things in life, it depends a little on the person and the situation, but in most cases communication is a terminal concept. (Although that one about arguing weirdly comes closest to an idea I am moving toward in this essay: a state of being.)

If we accept this definition (for now), can we agree that people who have successfully communicated exhaust their motivations for staying engaged? More precisely to our situation, in which publication is seen as the tangible end of writing (i.e., publication is communication), can we agree that the writer is ironically conditioned to stop engaging once their book is in print, even while we acknowledge that more happens after publication?

This version of communication carries death in its arms. Whatever space there might be for a writer to feel connected and satisfied is fleeting. “Don’t blink,” we might say, “I hope you enjoyed it.” What comes next—marketing, readings, interviews on podcasts—may feel like a different creature entirely, even unnerving and undesirable. Certainly it is nothing like the joy and vitality of writing, right?

A writer burdened by such a framework might long to roll back the clock to the drafting and revising stages, when something lively, interpersonal, and revelatory was clearly occurring. Worse, a writer may become burnt out by what comes after “finishing” and decide to step off the road of connection entirely. As a result their passion, alongside its printed and bound monument, quickly become dusty memories of connection.

This is a depressing state of affairs that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. In the spirit of Part One, why don’t we reframe and see if we can blaze a fresh trail?

Successful communication: A state of shared presence wherein one or more people are working toward fuller connection (with self, others, the natural world, a higher power), but never quite arrive. For the writer or anyone else, successful communication may now also be termed perpetual revision.

This suggests that the stages a creative communicator passes through—idea, draft, revision, agent, contract, publication, sales, etc.—do not so much measure how far they’ve reached on the road of connection and achievement (nor how proud or satisfied they deserve to be). Instead these stages simply describe different terrain, different weather encountered during an evolving state of being called Connected Communication. Think of it as how the body moves (and how the mind observes) while traveling. One is in a state of flux, carrying ideas also in flux, and they share the experience and ideas with whomever they encounter on the way.

In this framework “How do I get this done?” becomes a lesser question, as our attention shifts to a more valuable question, “How am I doing this?”

Let’s put this new definition through the paces and see where we get with it.

First let me acknowledge that my initial characterization of the writer’s ambitions is simplified. We know that inner motives are complicated and not always easily articulated. Deep down, few really want to be done with writing in order to abandon it (except maybe for that yearning we identified last time to bring a long grind of writing to a close; or, having hooked the big fish of a publisher, to finish with contractual logistics).

No, a writer wants to polish their writing in order to publish it, and they want to publish it in order to share the story widely, and they want to share the story widely because they want more deep connection with others and themselves. This suggests advancement, expansion, as the writer moves down the road. Perhaps more than they even want to see their words in print or their ideas adopted, the writer simply wants to be witnessed and to witness.

At least I believe this to be true for most writers. The reason I started with a provocative framing is to underline how our ends-based culture, which is also a culture of ranked achievement—in our case represented by the print media industry—distorts our vision of what is most important, our ability to achieve what we really want, the amount of satisfaction we can experience, and with what skill and depth we can navigate each stage in our progress. But what does it actually take to achieve as a writer? What is the true measure that one is doing enough?

A college friend of mine spent a semester working in a small village in Africa. After she returned, we sat down for lunch in the expectation-suffocated atmosphere of our college cafeteria. There she recounted an evening when everyone in the village gathered for a celebration and started to dance. After a while, someone noticed my friend sitting off to the side. He approached her to ask why she wasn’t also dancing. “I’m no good at it,” my friend responded (I picture her hunching her shoulders and shrinking into the shadows). The villager stared at her with reflected firelight undulating in his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘good’?” he asked her. “Everyone dances.”

I tell this anecdote while I belabor the matter of publication because I believe we suffer under a received orthodoxy that there is one and only one creative pathway. Only those who pass over its final threshold earn the right to dance. In fact, only those who pass through the gate ever truly dance at all.

We often grind impatiently through the writing version of lessons and auditions in anticipation of finally dancing—writing, connecting, achieving for real—which we believe only happens for those who are signing hardcovers and standing before large audiences.

Let me pause to reassure you that this is not a summons to abandon standards of excellence in writing. Communication is precious and also difficult, and it is worth our investment to refine our skills as both writers and editors.

Nor do I want your takeaway to be “screw the publishing world.” The desire to be in print, which for many writers is more accurately a desire to reach people, is worth encouraging in its pure form. And publishing in practice, thank goodness, is no longer a monolith. Precocious word pilgrims and those who want to help them have been forging novel paths to reach audiences for as long as stories have existed, and I wish every writer who wants to reach more readers enormous and iconoclastic success in achieving that dream.

No, I am not trying to burn it all down or discourage anyone’s passion. Instead, like last time, I mean this as a constructive, liberating challenge to our received assumptions. And today I have a prosaic question in mind.

(And what does this have to do with the idea that the journey to communicate is perpetual and self-fueling?)

Last week I suggested that embracing the revision process improves a writer’s positioning for the later stages of their journey: stages like publication, readership, and making a broad impact. It’s time to dig into that.

Remember our new definition for successful communication: (1) A state of shared presence wherein one or more people are working toward fuller connection. (2) A state of perpetual revision.

In the first part of this essay, I implied that there is no better preparation I can offer a client than to help them relish the revision process and experience increased passion, commitment, clarity, and skill. Why do I believe this is so helpful? Revising one’s writing is a probing, structured, evolving dialogue between writer, editor, and text. Aren’t many of the conversations a writer must have with other industry professionals going to follow a similar pattern?

Indeed, the editor is not the writer’s sole partner in carrying the manuscript forward. Eventually the editor bows out (or assumes a smaller role) as the writer enlists designer, agent, publisher, marketer to help bear the manuscript on its way through an evergreen conversational landscape.

Ideally, the writer will have by now devoted a lot of time and attention to their text … and to themselves and their desired audience. In cooperation with an excellent editor, the writer will have become intimately familiar with what they are trying to communicate, why they are on this journey, and what sort of word traveler they want to be. This includes how to respond to those they meet. It also includes, on an ideal level, how to remain faithful to their message as the landscape and company changes. For the writer and whomever they are traveling with will inevitably arrive at a fork in the creative road, and this will involve discussion or debate about the writer’s words.

A managing editor, for instance, will often recommend—or require—additions or deletions. The skillful writer learns how to accommodate this feedback while preserving the core integrity of their ideas.

Once the book is on shelves—and forever thereafter—the author will encounter readers with a surprising range of interpretations of the text. The author who desires earnest connection will engage these readers and their ideas with alertness and openness.

In fact, anytime a writer is asked by anyone about their writing, they have an opportunity to process all over again how this person is interpreting their words, digest what this person’s interpretations mean to them, and reconsider their own relationship to their words.

Yes, there are logistics involved with proposals, agents, publishers, etc., that no amount of creative enrichment can replace … and specialists (including some editors) can help a writer to navigate these technicalities. I myself continue to learn more about these areas so I can better help clients comprehend the stages of the process.

But the foundational topography, so to speak, through which every one of these stages must pass is the terra firma of earnest, attentive, inquisitive efforts at connection. This is the land of revision. And the writer’s own body and spirit are part of that land for as long as they move through it. They come to know writing, communication, and their own nature more deeply the more they slow down to relish editing and revising.

This is how I believe the writer gains a much clearer picture of the shape they take in the world, of what is foundational and what is negotiable in their self-expression, and of how they want to move on the road.

Each stage in the quest to communicate begets more quest. Here’s the self-fueling part, for those who were looking. The path is not a loop but it is a recurring pattern: one of expression, reflection, and response. Each person the writer connects with is different than the last, so the trail constantly furnishes new responses that demand fresh reflection and expression. Which underlines again that this endless communication trail is also the endless revision trail.

This state of affairs poses a valuable opportunity for writers and editors alike.

For writers, the invitation is to develop their skill with being en route. Developing clear and precise attention to the creative moment one is currently traveling through increases skill and capacity for deep attention to the only space one has and the only company one has, which is right now. As we have been exploring, this gives the writer a big boost in competent communication that will help them talk about their book with calm and confidence when they reach later stages like publication or audience engagement.

As for editors, the invitation is to leverage their acute skill with words as well as their deep respect for how slippery those words get once we start greasing them with meaning. Editors can use their aptitude and appreciation for how challenging and valuable communication is in order to help clients develop not just skill but patience, adaptability, and appreciation for small successes in the moment.

In a word, if you want to be published or to help someone get there, and if you want to be at your best for all that follows, revise, revise, revise.

The hunger is a blessing in that it inflames our inarticulate desire for what we might gain through creative communication. A blessing in that we recognize that self-expression has value. The industry part is a blessing in the sense that it provides formal mechanisms for connecting and helps us compensate value by buying books, paying for editors, attending lectures and readings, sharing our inspirations and skills, and so forth.

And as I hope is now abundantly clear, our word economy is also a curse in terms of how narrowly we have come to perceive value and success, which leads to missing out on so much other value that we can’t see while our attention is glued to the horizon.

The industry evolved to esteem fame, controversy, serializability, and the like. This set of values trains us to judge our writing and editing by whether it results in such accomplishments. If it does not, we find ourselves wanting, and we crumple up our more modest if enduring achievements. Even precious accomplishments like cultivating a keener practice of words, or developing a deep appreciation for the moment of creative connection, or enjoying the company of just one active listener in a modest setting, get tossed by the wayside.

Thankfully, as I mentioned earlier, fresh industry paths have been opening in recent years. Thankfully, our ideas of goals, means, and results have been expanding. Thankfully, we are no longer held quite so rigidly hostage to a very narrow path.

Last but not least, I hope I have been successful in this two-part essay in demonstrating that, thankfully, we do not have to reach a particular point on the path or wait for someone else to open a particular door in order to enjoy profound creative connection and satisfaction.

For as we have now seen, there are goals that are both achievable and immensely enriching on practical and profound levels that we can set and achieve today. Are you embracing your opportunities?

It’s no coincidence that while I write in this vein, my life and business seem to be on a similar migration. Some of my peers are on similar journeys. I have learned not to take such serendipity for granted.

I plan to continue to offer one-time editing services to the writers who want and need that (while giving as much as I can in the vein of what we’ve talked about for the last two weeks). Meanwhile I hope to move more energy into long-term coaching relationships. I’m excited by the thought of cultivating patient, incremental work with writers who get deep satisfaction from the work itself and who recognize that this slower path is profoundly enriching.

And I will, of course, continue to pursue the course we are on together today. I might love this more than anything: sharing my own journey in writing with you, my fellow travelers.

I often forget in my own anxiety and striving as a small business owner that life happens everywhere … not just at one point on the map where you and I are not. Specifically and most essentially, life is where we are right now. And the landscape always breathes and moves, as do we while we move through it. Writing about it helps me remember that.

I hope my words have given you, too, a chance to reflect and appreciate more deeply your own unfolding pilgrimage. I hope you celebrate how your labor as a writer or editor elevates how you experience the journey and whomever it is that is on that trip with you right now. I hope you feel inspired to give yourself more time to relish the steps you are taking today. And I hope you feel greater confidence that all your creative efforts, when pursued with diligence and presence, are already a success. You are working to connect more deeply to yourself, to others, and to the life. Well done.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

P.S. - If any other thought, question, or suggestion came up for you while reading, reach out and tell me about it.

P.P.S. - If you enjoy this newsletter, pass it along to someone else you know who travels the path of creative connection.