: Re: Is it possible for one to be a good editor but a bad writer or vice versa? If so, how? Intuitively, it would seem like being skilled in one automatically entails being skilled in the other.

@Samaraweera193

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What we call a "good writer" is usually a combination of someone who is good at writing and someone who is good at editing. But they are actually very different skillsets demanding very different temperaments and approaches. That's part of what makes good writing difficult.

Being good at writing involves creativity, originality, courage, commitment to self-expression, the ability to visualize things vividly and translate those sensations to paper, and a love of characters, dialogue & description. Being good at editing involves being detail-oriented, ruthless, meticulous, structure-oriented, familiar with conventions, committed to excellence, and technically advanced. The writer mines the gem, the editor cuts and polishes it.

The difficulty is that your inner editor can often get in the way of your inner writer. You often can't write at all if you are constantly self-editing as you go. But on the other hand, an unedited piece of writing is often sloppy, bloated, self-indulgent and tedious.

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