Dear Writer: The Positive Politeness Approach to Editing

By: Charlene Brown, Editor and Publisher of Clover Valley Press, LLC

“It’s easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren’t writers, and very little harm comes to them.”
--Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot

“The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring.”
--Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Writers often long for readers and editors who are perceptive, sensitive, and most of all, kind. Writing is such a personal act of courage and such an emotional journey. It’s actually a rather risky business.

We can overcome the barriers to writing, explained so eloquently by Virginia Woolf in her long essay A Room of One’s Own and by Tillie Olsen in her ominously titled Silences, but we face other obstacles.

After laboring to convey the idea that has captured our attention, our creativity, and our hard-won work, we struggle with themes, images, voice, and character. And then there is the mechanics of the thing. If one looks behind the magic curtain, every written work has a structure, an architecture, as well as a musical element. The scaffolding is built subconsciously at times and at other times quite deliberately.

Even though writers begin their journeys alone, if we wish to share our work, we eventually must invite others along with us—agents, editors, reviewers, booksellers, and common readers.

And because writing is an art, not a science, all these others who become involved with one’s project will have opinions, suggestions, and criticisms of the work. This adds to the emotional baggage that we feel when we begin the journey of producing a writing project, and we may anticipate it with dread. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation about “the human propensity to judge and the human longing to escape judgment” comes to mind.

Yet, every writer benefits from good editing, however fraught with risk the act of sharing one’s work might be. The work improves when exposed to the editor’s eye and concentrated focus on the mechanics, the sensibility, the facts, and the fluency of a piece.

I have often heard that sensibility is something that cannot be taught to a writer. Editors must also bring sensibility as well as tact to their task. It is my hope that editors can “be taught” to take a sensitive approach when working with writers.

Unfortunately, the writer and the editor may never meet face to face to discuss the suggestions for revision and the possibilities inherent in a work. But when they do meet, the editor has a huge responsibility to nurture the writer.

More is at stake here than correcting a grammatical error or smoothing an awkward transition. Here is a writer’s attention, creativity, and hard-won work. We should treat it carefully, gently, and respectfully—handling it as the courageous act of self-expression that it is.

A faculty member at the University of Minnesota Duluth, Jo Mackiewicz, along with her colleague K. Riley, completed a study and produced an article, “The Editor as Diplomat: Linguistic Strategies for Balancing Clarity and Politeness.” They based their study on recordings made of sessions between undergraduate writers and their tutors. Mackiewicz and Riley found that writers have “positive face needs”—that is, they need to be liked by, approved of by, and connected to others. They also noted that writers have negative face needs as well—“the need to be autonomous, independent, and free from imposition.”

Tutors and editors working with writers often perform face-threatening speech acts. They use popular pejoratives such as “awkward,” “wordy,” “unclear,” “confusing,” “redundant,” and “weak.” They might even indicate that a work is “disorganized,” “too long,” or “unfocused.” An editor can hardly avoid the need to identify problems in writing pieces because the editor needs to support suggestions for revision. Yet, criticism can be softened and downgraded by using positive politeness strategies.

Instead of saying, “This is wordy,” an editor might say, “This sentence could be shortened” or “I would try to say this more concisely.” The simple use of “I” statements or “we” statements can bring an element of inclusiveness to the conversation. It is possible to allow the author to feel that you are collaborating with her rather than criticizing her.

Instead of “This paragraph has no focus,” one could say, “I would focus the introduction around the claim you make in this sentence.” Instead of saying, “This sentence is confusing,” say “Tell me what you meant by ‘… .’”

Avoiding and mitigating criticism can help to build a writer’s confidence, and it can also bring into being a good working relationship between an editor and the writing client.


Mackiewicz, J. & Riley, K. “The Technical Editor as Diplomat: Linguistic Strategies for Balancing Clarity and Politeness.” Technical Communication 50: 83-94, 2003.

Sacraments of Flesh

By: Gary J. Boelhower

As bodily beings it is our nature to be attracted to the sacraments of flesh, the sound of bells and barking dogs, the flavor of basil, salt, whiskey, blood, the smell of baking bread and oozing earth, the ocular picnic of autumn, the touch of fire or sweet, sweet flesh.
So much of good writing is its sensual precision. If I can simply allow the reader to be here, to crouch on this jutting cliff above Bear Lake and smell the minty musk of sun-warmed pine and falling birch leaves, to watch the wind place its commas on the gray page a hundred feet below, I will achieve my purpose.
Why not just take a picture? The photograph is frozen, has borders; it doesn’t do what I want to do. It stays with the external geography when I want to step from this cliff into the internal landscape of wonder.
I struggle to make the words sing, to invite the mind and heart to wander to similar places, remembered vistas, glimpsed overlooks. I want the bodies of my words to call to you. I want this beauty to open a question in you or to unlock some simple moment that has been hidden or lost. I want you to sigh or to say “yes.”
If I can just tell you how the light slants here, if I can word paint for you the twenty shades of patina and rust on this rock face lichen, if I can get the sound of the wind right as it lifts out of the green valley, you might see it, hear it. The scene might open something and where it leads is your business. I’m just a writer.

Why I Write

By: Gary Boelhower

Not for the audience, although I love it on those few occasions when I have one. Not for publication, although it sure is nice to see one’s name in print once in a great while. Not for fame, because on most days I have no visions of grandeur. Not for the money, certainly not for the money, because writing has never been anything but a drain on my economy.

So why write? It has become a spiritual practice for me, and like most of my spiritual practices, I do it haltingly, unevenly, inconsistently, passionately. It has become a way of focusing my attention on what needs attention, a way of listening, a way of following a path that lures me into gratitude. The gratitude may be joyous, sad or angry, but it is still gratitude for the voices, for the beauty and horror that comes to visit, for the music that plays in the warm breeze and the blizzard’s sting, in the spider’s weave and the lily’s jocund jazz, the fog horn’s requiem, the cocky jay’s riff, my own heart’s drum.

And it is a way of seeing. Without writing, I hurry on my way, so often pass by the gleaming dew on the ordinary grass, the girl with perfect pigtails and a fancy dress letting go of her mother’s hand as she steps onto the bus, the way the hungry belly swells with pleading in so many scarred and violent geographies.

If I didn’t write about these things, if I didn’t record the sounds, try to get the colors right, I would be so much poorer. My skin would be tougher. I would be less distracted, more single-minded, more productive. There would be fewer questions and I wouldn’t wonder so much. Wonder.

Not Quite Ready to Write, Right?

By: Phil Fitzpatrick

Most of what I've written has never seen the light of day, and so far, I’ve been okay with that. I'm a career educator, so I'd hazard a guess that I've written more on student essays and tests over the years than I'll ever be able put into the “Great American Novel" or a Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection. I'm not driven like many writers say you have to be in order to feel any sort of fulfillment. I don't get up at oh-dark-thirty and write for four hours every day, nor do I keep a little weather-beaten spiral notebook in my shirt pocket for those times when inspiration strikes and I have to scribble words of genius down. I have trouble following Sean Connery's advice in Finding Forrester: "Don't think. Just write. The first draft you write from your heart; the second draft you write with your head!" I stumble through a composition in fits and starts; I get up and sit down again, proofread what I've just written over and over again, second guess myself...it's just a train wreck, my writing. So where’s the upside?

I’ll tell you where it is. It’s in what F. Scott Fitzgerald calls “the infinite possibility.” Hardly a day passes when there are not a dozen or so moments that fairly shriek to be written about. The absence of a notebook is no deterrent whatsoever, nor are the widening holes in my memory. Each day is a cornu copia of possibilities, each person I encounter offers me pages of text, and each passing hour contains within it sounds and sights and fragrances enough to write six or eight trilogies. But experiencing all of this as “possibility” is getting old. I just have to have more time. I’ve got all the inspiration I need. As a matter of fact, my reservoir is overflowing. It got so full a few years ago that after I got myself a sabbatical, I wound up writing a book about golf, of all things. GOLF!! I call it my Practice Book.

That drained my tank enough to where I feel pretty good about launching into a project that has some heft and some muscle to it; I’ll not do anything so lightweight as a golf book this time. No way. I’m through with whimsy. People expect substance when they see your name on the cover of your book. They want thoughtful and responsible prose or poetry that makes them think. I’ve got plenty of prose and poetry waiting in the wings to be artfully and patiently and diligently coaxed onto the receptive pages with all the seriousness of purpose my gardening, grading, and golfing have so far succeeded in preventing. But one fine day, Boy, I’ll muster a book that won’t languish in a dozen boxes on the front porch the way this Pretender, this bogus (hmmm, sounds like “bogey”!) golf book is doing.

And so we beat on…trying to find time, and dreaming…dreaming of the possibility.