Who’s too good to need an editor? No one.
In the corporate world, it’s not uncommon for a high-level manager or executive to instruct publishing teams not to edit their work. I’ve had to cringe many a time when publishing an executive piece that has a ludicrously long title and a word count that’s double the standard, uses shameless marketing-ese or meaningless business-speak, and commits other egregious crimes against best practices. But when an executive says, “This has been approved as is; don’t edit,” what can you do?
I was recently on a phone call with a director who, speaking of his newly submitted blog post, said, “Everything I’ve written in this piece is pretty intentional, so please don’t make any edits.” Mind you, my team works with a great content management company who does an excellent job of editing. They know our style, they know the lingo of our industry, they fact check, and they make every piece they work on better than it was before. It pained me to know that the director’s ego was getting in the way of publishing a better-quality piece. A lot of authors’ egos are highly entangled with their writing--and taking pride in one’s work is no doubt a good thing; but humility will take you much farther as a writer than a sense of superiority ever will. Everybody, I mean EVERYBODY, has blind spots in their work. So if you’re a writer (or if you’re not a writer but you’ve written something) and you have the opportunity to get an experienced editor to look over you work, take advantage of it. An editor’s goal is to MAKE YOU LOOK GOOD, to ensure that your voice remains intact and that your published article is error-free.
Nobody is above the need for good editing.