Group Editing

So I ended up on the writing committee to come up with a values statement for my office. The office is updating their mission statement, values statement, and vision statement and working on a motto.

The writing committee was made up of two people who volunteered plus another guy. Things went better than I expected, and comments were solicited from the staff about our statement and what we had so far for the others.

I saw my first set of other people's comments about my work today. No one seemed to have a problem with any of the content. But they all had problems, major problems, with the writing. Basically, they thought everything was too wordy, and we shouldn't have separate statements but should just put everything into one paragraph. In the mission statement, we tried to list all of the things we do. But a critique was that we shouldn't even try this; it just sounds disjointed.

The critique that hit me the hardest though was the one where one about how we listed each value and then its definition, like people don't know what things mean. This hit me hard because we listed the value with why it was an important value for our office, not a definition. For example, communication is important so that we can share knowledge, learn exactly what people want, etc. (The wording was better, but I don't remember it.) And every time one of the other people tried to add something that was in any way like a definition of the word (such as, for communication, adding the word "clearly"), I wouldn't let them. Which means all of my troubles were for nothing, since people still insisted on seeing definitions anyway.

I expected people to have problems with it. I expected different people to have different problems which would be impossible to solve simultaneously. But I didn't expect people to say we should get rid of something that wasn't even there. And I didn't expect them to be pissed off that we followed instructions (separate statements).

I immediately decided that I'm never writing for a group again. I'm only writing for one person. Then when that person (and I) are satisfied, it's done. This whole trying to make people happy thing? Screw that.

Then I realized that all writing is for a group of people. Or at least all editing is. Let's say I'm working with a professor to write some class material, if we agree that it's good, but then discover that students don't understand parts of it, then it's not done.

So I decided I'm never writing at all, for anyone. Too hard. Impossible, really.

(I suppose you think I'm writing right this minute, don't you? Smart aleck.)

(Sometimes when I don't do what I decide to do, that's a good thing. I don't know if this is one of those times, but probably it is.)

Then I saw one of my coworkers (who just today was volunteered to be on the writing committee for the vision statement) on the bus and talked to her. She said that armchair editors can do a lot of talking, but if they'd really cared that much, they should have volunteered to actually help. And she let me see that what we'd written could be interpreted as definitions, but then she said that they were definitions specific to our office, and she thought they were appropriate and helpful.

And Robin also said you can't take these things too seriously. And I realized that just because one person wants a particular thing changed doesn't necessarily mean everyone does. Plus, people are only saying what they don't like.

In conclusion, I feel a little better about writing than when I first read those comments.