Editing... everything.

I've been a writer pretty much all my life. I can be a reporter when that skill is needed, but I'm really a wordsmith at heart.

Writing may sound like a fun profession, maybe even a bit glamorous. In truth, for most of us, it is neither. This isn't a profession you take on because you CAN write. It's a profession you take on because you HAVE to write. You write because you just can't help yourself.

Reporters seem to have a need to dig out a story more than to tell it. Writers have to dig out a story, too, but the focus isn't the same. The difference seems to lie in a compulsive need to compose -- a fascination with how words fit together to translate thought and feeling.

Getting words to work and feel as they should can be incredibly difficult and frustrating. Yet that's what a writer feels compelled to do. The hardest work in crafting sentences is in the editing. You write, re-write, edit over and over again.

Any conscientious writer can look at words he/she edited a dozen times six months ago and still find lots of ways to improve. Much of the improvement comes in paring down -- simplifying. The most elegant writing is very simple. It's astonishing what you can cut away and still tell a story well.

I don't consider myself a truly good writer. There are plenty of writer's out there whose work I'd rather read. But being even an adequate writer is a lot of hard work.

Not that I'm complaining. To be allowed into a life, and to share in the telling of it, is a privilege. All storytellers know that.

Telling a story in an honest way can be a very emotional process. Doing so requires getting into the head and heart of a topic, of a situation, of another person. You have to truly feel the emotions, feel the impact yourself, in order to write about them accurately and in a way that translates.

A raw sensitivity, a heart for a story and the people in it, are characteristic. As good as those traits may be for storytelling, however, they're not so great for living out day-to-day life.