In The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative, Vivian Gornick writes toward the end: “This book grew out of fifteen years of teaching in MFA programs, where I have learned that you cannot teach people how to write—the gift of dramatic expressiveness, of a natural sense of structure, of making language sink down beneath the surface of description, all that is inborn, cannot be taught—but you can teach people how to read, how to develop judgement about a piece of writing: their own as well as that of others.” 

I’ve had my own suspicions that this is true, about the inbornness of it all, but even with that, the relationship of writer and editor has proven necessary to make it really work. These days, writers often have to rely on self-editing, and I’ve learned a lot about this over the past five-plus years. Self-editing has meant leaning on, of course, my experiences as a copy editor, editor, and writer being edited—on everything from personal essays to reported features to books—and so I’ve come up with some key things to always look for, as well as ways to look at my own work as an outsider. I split my brain for this, but there are ways to learn how to do it. Writing might be an inborn talent but editing is not, and it can help the former find its shape. 

In September, I’m going to offer a workshop called The Self-Edit, in which I will discuss my own process for self-editing and provide a checklist for what to look for in your own work that might be weakening it. After editing 60-plus essays while teaching a few months ago, I really got to zoom in on the mistakes most people make (myself included) and how we can fix them ourselves. Sign up here, and members—as always—can take 25 percent off with the code at their page upon logging in. The price will go up to $150 for non-members and $125 for members on September 2.

Here, I’ll give you five tips for better writing that you can apply right now and to work that is creative, technical, or marketing copy.