Thanks P. G., for reminding me for the hundredth time why I vehemently refuse to be an editor. As I told you before, I once worked as a professional (paid) editor for a print magazine. I hated it so much that I quit after only a year and a half. My personal opinion is that you're not a real writer until you are capable of editing your own work. You simply cannot be a writer unless you are also an editor. The better I became as an editor, the better I became as a writer. The better I became as a writer, the better I became as an editor. They go hand-in-hand. When we separate those two aspects and farm out the editing part to others then we stop growing. We simply cannot become a better writer until we become our own better editor. And we cannot become a better editor unless we keep writing until we get to the point where we no longer use editors (human or technological) as a crutch. As writers we should walk without crutches!
I realize this goes against all mainstream thought. Of course it is my nature to ALWAYS go against mainstream thought. (One of the reasons I am so hated by Medium publication editors.) But my dictum has always been to push the envelope of mainstream thought. Why write what is safe and acceptable when you can introduce new ideas and challenge the accepted norms that keep us squirming in the malaise of the status quo?
What that writer you highlighted was saying has already been said by literally hundreds of thousands of Medium writers. Maybe that writer did not say it in the formulaic protocol that is expected and required on Medium but why even accept it when it is just a mainstream formulaic rehashing of what has already been said hundreds of thousands of times?
To me, the most glorious aspect of being an editor is in discovering a writing talent that pushes the envelope of the accepted norm, who dares to go beyond the formulaic dictates of the status quo and presents new ideas, new concepts, new strategies, new formulas, new styles, new attitudes, and new perspectives. It is looking for and discovering new approaches rather than the same old, same old formulaic approaches to everything. Instead of looking for what fits into the old paradigms, it is looking for what points towards new paradigms. As an editor it is finding someone or something that breaks every rule in the Medium formulaic handbook and blows everyone away.
I realize that is incredibly difficult for any editor on Medium to find but I see it as the only reason to be an editor on this extremely mainstream platform. It is the proverbial needle in a haystack but I hope you someday find it.
You can find it in others or you can find it in yourself. It is waiting there for YOU to stumble upon it. It is waiting right there for you to discover once all judgment is dropped. It is always on the verge of erupting. The ground is shaking under your feet.
