How to Edit So Your Grumpy Boss Is Happy

Editing tricks for busy writers.

Sometimes the line between writer and stenographer is non-existent. An assignment comes in. You want to write what’s best based on your analysis of the situation and your experience of what works. Yet sometimes your boss has no use for your good counsel. She’s going to say what she wants to say without regard for whether readers or listeners will be interested, remember, or even understand—at least, as you see it.

We've all been there. Caught between delivering what she wants and what she needs, you smother the impulse to argue the case. You make the misbegotten changes. You deliver the document, and you wonder why you were hired as a writer if you aren’t there to write. Time passes. Pretty soon the frustration has driven you to extremes. You’re drinking around the clock, you’ve gambled away your savings, and you’re wanted by Interpol for masterminding a pyramid scheme across 19 countries.

I have a big announcement coming soon.
Stay tuned.

It doesn’t have to go that far. The writer and the principal can have a more satisfying and more productive experience if editing is an integrated process, not a turnkey assignment:

Start with a complete list of requested changes. Don’t work from memory. Don’t work from first-draft notes. If the edits came out of a conversation, convert the talk into a list of requests. Number them in order of importance. Reduce each to a descriptive phrase followed by a sentence or two of explanation.

If you are unsure of what the client wants, ask. Assuming you took reasonable notes, your uncertainty reflects the client’s uncertainty. If you make a change without knowing what you’re trying to achieve, there’s little chance you will make the correct change. When a client doesn't know what she wants in the first place, she can't be satisfied with your response.

The easiest boss-pleaser is to insert what the boss said into the document.

If the client wants a change in “mood” or “tone,” don’t rewrite the whole thing. When someone says the food isn’t salty enough, the chef doesn’t remake the whole dish. It’s the same with a text or speech. The complaint may come in as bellowing disappointment in the whole piece of work, but a writer must identify the real problem out of a torrent of complaint (which is often just venting anyway). In nearly every case, the repair is a few simple insertions.

For instance, if the piece should be more “hopeful,” throw in a line or a story about hope every few hundred words. This is even more effective if you can find a related phrase or word in the complaint: “This speech needs more positivity on education. Without education a kid’s got no chance. Put in more about education!” Nothing succeeds like giving a principal her own words. Without education, a kid’s got no chance. If I were making edits, that sentence would get repeated like Yes, we can! at an Obama rally.

Return the document with the list. To stay employed, a writer must constantly prove his worth. We see the world in terms of problems encountered and problems solved; doing good work consistently makes little impression. Return the revised document along with that list of problems. Include a short summary of each change by each item. That sticky note with “Fixed it” scrawled on is a missed opportunity of the first order.

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