My name is Steven and I'm a failed writer.

I recently began working with an editor. She's quite wonderful — insightful, honest without being malicious, thorough. She seems determined to push me toward success in writing despite my previously stated goal to fail. She found no syntax or punctuation errors in the last pages I sent, so I guess she's my new best friend.

Do all writers need an editor? Not if you want to be a failed writer. I was nicely on my way to failing some years ago and made the mistake of working with an editor who put the brakes on my runaway train. For those who have been following this blog, you'll recall that I began as a writer of fiction and then made a right-angle turn into medical school that eventually led to a career in academic medicine. I wrote articles and book chapters. The first scientific article I wrote had the sexy title of "Temperature Measurements in Term and Preterm Neonates." Now I'd like to take a moment to point out that I wanted to entitle it "Fifty Shades of Temperature Measurements in Term and Preterm Neonates," but was overruled by my editor. Can we all agree that he was wrong and I was right? I believe so.

Anyway, I wrote a draft of the paper to be submitted to a medical journal. I then happily delivered it to the senior author, an experienced writer and editor of medical and scientific papers. As one who had published creative works and written sketch comedy, I believed the medical literature desperately in need of being jazzed up and had written the paper with a bit more flair than was considered traditional. For the non-scientists, I should point out that any degree of flair in medical writing above no flair whatsoever is considered heretical. They don't burn you at the stake for it, but you can get a nasty note from the chairman of your tenure committee. So . . . I deliver this flair-infused draft to the senior author who pulls out his red pen and goes to work. A couple of days later he returns the paper to me so covered in red it looks as if he had opened a vein on it. "It's a good start," he told me, using a tone of voice that made clear how monumentally bad a start it actually was.

I took his advice, rewrote the paper; then rewrote it several more times with his help. It was eventually published in the journal Pediatrics. I should have stopped there, gone back to the more florid style that would have produced rejections, been satisfied to bask in the delusion that my work was misunderstood and under-appreciated by the medical journal editors. Instead, I went on to publish a number of articles, chapters, and reviews. When I again began to write fiction the work was more disciplined, because editors had taught me how to write. 

You can see, aspiring failed writers, how an editor can retard your downward spiral and I recommend that you avoid them. Moreover, be aware that once they have their hooks in you, it's tough to break free. For example, my new editor has not only provided valuable and objective advice, she's encouraging as well. She just returned some pages to me, and like one of Pavlov's dogs, I'm having a conditioned response. I'm taking her bloody advice and am resigned to the fact that the next draft of my book will be better. That will, no doubt, provoke a glimmer of hope and I'll have to query a few agents who will promptly set me straight by finding much to admire in my work, even though they'd rather put their mouths over the end of a hot exhaust pipe and be dragged across a field of prickly cactus than represent me. Thank God for agents! I love every pin in their heads.