With All My Wordy Goods ...

Tea: Mandarin Green

Music: Jerry Douglas, "Birdland"

Time: Night.

"Trust" is a word with more levels than a good-sized apartment building.

I trust my neighbors not to come over and help themselves to my TV when I go off leaving the house unlocked. Beyond that, I trust them to call the police if they see someone they don't know rummaging around.

I trust that the 911 operator will pick up, if that call has to be made, and I trust the authorities to get here quickly.

If the burglar has knocked me on the head, I trust the emergency medical technicians to get me to the hospital and the doctors and nurses there to care for me competently and professionally.

And if I've been hit really, really hard, I trust the nice people who'll get my body to send it to a medical school, where it can do some good.

But I wouldn't trust any of them with my words. My life and health and safety, yes, but not my words.

To hand over copy to another person, and trust that person to make it better without stripping away the writer's voice, is a step some writers can never take. They might submit to editing, but grudgingly -- and their work suffers for it. Conversely, some editors are unworthy of that trust. They put in mistakes. They change the writer's vision to fit their own. They hand down their judgements from on high and will brook no dialogue.

I've been fortunate enough to find trustworthy eyes for my own work, and to have been entrusted with the task of helping to shape others' writing. I'm grateful on one hand, mindful on the other.

After all, all we writers have are words. We have to take care of them ... and each other.