Hi Reader,

“Listen to your ten most recent podcast episodes. As you listen, perform a self-assessment using this worksheet.”

That was my homework for the podcasting course I’m taking. It’s about how to craft episodes so that each one is unputdownable.

It wasn’t advertised as a course in why writers hire editors, but it turns out that it’s about that, too.

The first step was to see what’s working already—and what’s not—in the episodes I’ve already produced. Hence the homework.

I can do this, I told myself. It can’t be that hard.

The things I was looking for were clearly marked on a worksheet, after all. There was a walkthrough video to explain how to find them, and an accompanying color-coded spreadsheet to make recording the data super simple.

I pressed play.

Three seconds in, I pressed pause. Have you ever listened to a recording of your own voice? This is the worst. Or revisited something you created after you published it, when all the mistakes can glare at you and you can’t fix any of them? This is also the worst.

I pressed play again, because I had homework to complete. (I also pressed 1.5x speed, because this homework was the worst.)

One and a half minutes in, I pressed pause. I was looking for the first moment that would hook a listener. Had I found it, at 1.5 minutes?

Or had I actually cleverly put it in the first 5 seconds?

Or was it buried 5 minutes in and I was kidding myself to think this intro was interesting?

Or maybe this episode didn’t contain anything that would hook any listener at all, no one had pressed play, and my download numbers were a bald-faced lie?

I stared off into space (a place blessedly devoid of podcast episodes) and wished desperately that someone else would do my homework for me.

I thought about the class I’m taking and the podcast expert teaching it. He does these kinds of assessments all the time for his clients. I bet he’d know exactly what to look for. I wondered how much money I’d need to throw at him in order to convince him to do my homework for me.

And then I gave up. Here’s what I sent my editor colleagues:

Evaluating my own podcast, I decided, was an exercise in frustration that would get me nowhere.

The next part of the homework asked me to evaluate other people’s podcasts. An absolute breeze.

I have so many opinions about other people’s podcasts. I know exactly what hooks me and what makes something unlistenable when it comes to other people’s podcasts.

The thing is, I would love to know what hooks listeners when they press play on my episodes.

But every time I press play, I will hear it as the creator, not the listener.

I can never experience my own podcast in my listeners’ shoes. I can never experience something I created from an outside perspective.

And that is when the penny dropped.

Do you see it? (Did you catch on quicker than I did? It took me an embarrassingly long time.)

This is why writers hire editors.

This is why podcasters hire that podcast expert.

This is why my job exists.

You can never experience something you created from an outside perspective.

You can’t read your own stories as though someone else wrote them.

A worksheet is a helpful tool for evaluating writing. But it’s extremely difficult to evaluate your own writing, even with a worksheet to guide you.

And it’s such a relief to hand it all over to someone who . . .

→ Knows what to look for

→ Can fill out that worksheet in their sleep

→ And can tell you what to do with what they find.

That’s the magic of working with an editor. It’s why I’ll never teach myself out of a job (and this podcast expert won’t, either).

Because the real value isn’t the knowledge of story—or at least, it’s not just the knowledge of story.

Knowledge of story + outside perspective = the feedback you crave.

(And it turns out, the feedback I crave, too.)

If you’d like me to do your “homework” for you and look at your story from the perspective you can never access on your own, click here and let’s chat.

Just don’t get down on yourself if the “homework” feels impossible to do on your own. That’s not an indication that you’re bad at it. It just means that you wrote your story.

And if you want to know how it lands with someone who’s not you . . . well, you’ll need to share it with someone who’s not you.

Happy editing,

Alice
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