Did I say back next Thursday? I meant back next Tuesday.

Today’s business is to wish a hearty Happy Birthday to my friend Marissa. Welcome to your second quarter-century, kiddo — it’s all sagging, mysterious weight gain, and other instances of decrepitude from here on out. Yes, decrepitude. I, for one, have discovered that on a good morning I can run a little over a mile before collapsing in a gasping, wheezing heap. For crying out loud, I was on the varsity soccer team.¹ This sucks.

But hey, here’s what sucks worse: somebody decided to give M’ris a a big flaming sack of poop for her birthday. See, Marissa had mused that while writing is a difficult profession, so are all the other professions out there — and that rather than overdramatizing our pain-as-writers, we should take care of business as best we can and move on. Just like nurses, carpenters, Marines, and so on. But no — along comes this gentleman, who insists that no, no no, my pain-as-a-writer is super-special after all. (Fortunately, M’ris can take care of herself just fine.)

This all begs the question — why are people so awfully sensitive about their own writing?

One theory might be that writers are necessarily sensitive, delicate souls who therefore wilt under the cruelties of rejection letters, bad editors, and mean family members.

The problem with this rather romantic theory is that most writers in the Real World aren’t like that at all; or if they are, they’ve learned to deal. In my experience most professional writers quickly develop a thick, crusty shell for protection. If a critique or edit is good, you think about it and incorporate it; if it’s crap, you ignore it (assuming business conditions permit). End of story.

Conversely, non-professionals are usually far more sensitive about their writing than professionals. Take it from me — when an engineer writes a tech paper or a specification, getting him or her to sit down and go over some edits is like pulling teeth. It happens over and over again. One minute, we’re cleaning up some API verbiage; the next minute, we’re in a symposium on the Soul of the Postmodern American Writer with our special guest, Jonathan Franzen.

After several years, I think I’m starting to understand this behavior. Writing is always an ego-intensive process; whether you’re writing fiction or an API specification,² there’s always a lot of you in there. It’s just that the main difference between professionals and non-professionals is that non-professionals don’t learn how to detach their ego when it needs to be detached.

For this reason, every writer and editor needs a bag of tricks for dealing with bruised egos. Here’s one trick I’ve learned: never edit with red ink. Red ink makes people angry and defensive. Maybe it reminds them of bad experiences in high school English… or maybe red is just an angry color. Either way, I recommend switching to green ink. It makes a world of difference.

However, I’m still up in the air about smiley faces. On the one hand, smileys have powerful ameliorative properties. Just think! — you can transform a proofreading mark that means “This whole paragraph sucks, and we’re dropping it,” to mean “This whole paragraph sucks, and we’re dropping it — but I mean that in the nicest of ways.”

On the other hand, I can’t bring myself to use smileys. Hey, I’m just not That Guy.

1. I didn’t play very much, but still.

2. In some organizations the difference between the two is not as large as you might think.