Hi Reader,

Have you ever felt profoundly seen by something someone else has written?

It’s an incredible feeling. The sense that you’re not alone. Someone else thinks and feels and sees and understands the same things you do. Someone found words for an experience you’ve struggled to express. And because they shared those words with you, you can pass them on to other people so others can see a little glimpse of you, too.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess . . . yes. At some point, in something you’ve read, you’ve had that feeling. Maybe it’s even what inspired you to become a writer—so that you can write the words that will make other people feel seen, too.

Last week, I felt profoundly seen . . .

. . . by a playbill at a theater.

On Saturday, a few friends and I saw the play Purpose. I love the playbills at this theater, which include articles about the context, themes, and creative vision behind each show. So while my friends chatted, I read.

One quote from the director hit me hard. With just a couple minutes before the show began, I whipped out my phone to take photos of the pages and text them to my editor colleagues Kim and Brannan.

Here’s the passage that got to me:

In case my colleagues missed the point, I cropped the photo and highlighted my favorite lines:

“I would enjoy helping people find the story more than being a part of the story. I can show up and move the chess pieces around. That’s where it really becomes fun.”

I often feel like people “get” the appeal of being an actor or a writer pretty easily.

After all, we see the actors on the stage. We can imagine the thrill they get from performing, embodying a character, living out a story before an audience. We get to witness the creative choices they’re making as they make each one. We get to see them bring themselves to their art.

Writing, like acting, is personal—it’s your own individual self-expression, your unique-to-you creation. And it’s visible—it’s the role that readers think of when they imagine the creative force behind a novel.

The director’s work, and the editor’s, is behind the scenes. And so their thrill, their creative choices, their self-expression is also behind the scenes.

What is the thrill the director experiences, hidden outside of our view? What’s the draw for them, the delight that we can’t see directly, but only infer through its impacts?

It’s in helping people find the story. In seeing what’s there, what each contributor has brought to the table, the vision that the collective is aiming to create, and moving the chess pieces around to bring it to life.

Bolden captured so beautifully the thrill I feel as an editor. I don’t want or need to be a part of the story myself. Helping others find the story is, to the right person (me!), even more satisfying than writing or performing it oneself.

Naturally, Kim replied to my highlight with one of her own:

“I love being in a room and collaborating from every aspect. . . . I want them to bring me their best ideas, and we figure out how it fits into the story.”

Collaboration is one of Kim’s core values as an editor, author, and creator. As she puts it, “I think it produces the best ideas. And the best ideas are the most fun.”

So I wasn’t surprised in the slightest when these lines stuck out to her. I asked her later why they resonated, and here’s what she told me:

“I know that experience. That feeling of what it means to be the person who’s holding all the ideas.

"You feel like a kid at Christmas. You’re just being given all these amazing, fabulous fun, ideas, and you just get to sit there and have epiphanies about them. I get to immerse in the act of pattern recognition.

"It’s just the best. That rapid, safe, iterative exchange of ideas, where you’re in the flow, bouncing ideas back and forth, as something is literally being made.

"When I read those lines, they immersed me back in my favorite experience. I love it so much. If you know, you know.”

Yes, I tapped the friends sitting in the theater next to me to gush about all these thoughts. No, they were not particularly interested.

I wasn’t surprised. After all, those friends are fully in the role of audience member. They were there to experience the art, not to ponder how it was made.

Your role, however, is neither editor nor director nor audience member.

It’s writer.

You are the originator of your ideas.

You are the creator responsible for putting them to paper.

You get to decide whom you collaborate with. Who isn’t part of the story themselves, but who helps you find the story.

And so I ask you:

Do you have someone like this in your corner?

Happy editing,

Alice

P.S. If you don’t have someone like that in your corner, and you’d like to, hit reply with “play.” I’ll send you all the details on how we can work together.
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