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With 2025 almost here, it’s time for resolutions you’ll actually want to keep: 10 Resolutions for Editors.
Resolution 1: Ask yourself this question: Are my edits making the story better or just different?
Steve Padilla
6,196 posts
Steve Padilla
@StevePadilla2
- A Writer’s Thanksgiving: let us give thanks for copy editors, dictionaries, E.B. White, style books, Shakespeare, loose deadlines, editors who improve our work but preserve our voice. Did I mention copy editors? #HappyThanksgiving to writers all over. May the gravy & words flow.
- As promised, here are Ten New Year’s Resolutions for Editors. They're resolutions you really can keep. Resolution for Editors No. 1: To read every word of a draft before making changes. (Yes, this is hard. But if time permits, a good practice.)
- With sorrow I must share that my mother, Dora Padilla, has died from COVID-19. Blessedly, the end was peaceful. Allow me to share a story I wrote about her career as a school board member. When 2000 arrived, the @latimes ran essays inspired by front pages from the 1900s. 1/2
- Donovan Carrillo, the first Mexican figure skater in the Olympics in 30 years, just qualified for the free skate. He’s from Guadalajara, where most of the ice is in the margaritas. To learn about his amazing journey, see the recent @latimes Column One.
- An Editor’s Thanksgiving. Nine things editors are (and should be) grateful for: No. 1: Writers who read their work out loud.
- Here are 10 items for any editor’s 2021 to-do list. Resolutions for Editors, No. 1: To remember it’s not your byline on the story. Also, ask yourself: “Am I making this better, or just different?” #editing #writing #NewYearsResolutions
- “Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.” Cicero, born this day, 106 BC.
- Thirty-one years ago today, I started work at @latimes. Still happy and grateful to be here. And though I’m sad to leave my fine colleagues on the foreign-national desk, I’m looking forward to next week, when I’ll fully jump into my new duties on Column One and Metpro.
- Here are New Year’s resolutions you really can keep-- Resolutions for Writers. No. 1: To never stop reading. You never know where you will find inspiration: poetry, fiction, long-form and short. It can be a word, a technique or a framing device that makes your next story pop.
- I'm an editor and, sorry, I disagree. Writers and editors must talk (nicely) a lot. And if an editor's fix is clunky it doesn't mean the writer's original wording was on target. They should find 3rd and better way together.Don't 👏argue 👏 with 👏 your 👏 editor 👏 over 👏 minor 👏 details they are better than you at writing, it's their job to be, that's why they're an editor
- I work with words but I have none to capture what this day is like. I will miss so many fine journalists, so many fine people. A heartbreaking day. latimes.com/entertainment-…
- Thank you to all who continue to subscribe to the LA Times, where I have toiled 37 years, despite the recent unpleasantness. Thank you for believing in our mission to report the news and to promote storytelling in Column One. To those who've left, I hope we can regain your trust.
- I just chatted writing with the @latimes spring interns and, among other things, shared four tips on using quotes. Now I’ll share with you. Quote Tip No. 1: Review the sentence before each quote. Such lead-ins often give away too much of the quote and can be trimmed or cut.
