No one’s an expert at everything.
The other day, while working on a home improvement project, I faced a choice: I could risk injury—or I could ask my wife’s help.
I needed to trim several inches from the end of an eight-foot-long board. My table saw was ready. But without a third hand, I couldn’t support the board to make the cut.
I could have tried to jury-rig some kind of support. But why bother? All I had to do was ask for her help.
Writing projects can be like that. Recently a multi-published author asked for my help on a daily devotional. Much of the material dated back several decades, before he’d gotten formal training in writing. He has great insights that he expresses well, but knows that for him, grammar is a weak point. He asked me to examine all 250 entries—primarily to check the grammar.
Then there was the YA fantasy novel I recently worked with. The author spins a captivating story. But he struggles with his dialogue attributions, using an old-fashioned, telling style that pulls readers out of the story. In the tracked-changes version I sent him, he could see how I made sure speakers were identified clearly and early, how I mixed dialogue tags with beats and replaced the telling dialogue tags.
On his next novel, he might not need this help. Or maybe he will. We all have weaknesses, areas of our writing in which we’ll always struggle. If we’re wise, we’ll find people we can trust to point out those shortcomings. One we’ve overcome an initial reluctance to ask for help, we’ll be glad we did.
