Re: He said...She said...He said...etc. (Was Re: What's A TW Got To DO To Get A Job Around Here?!)

[Andrew Plato <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

> If you take written material produced by nonwriters and rewrite that
> material so that it is intelligible, you are not an editor -- you are a
> writer.
 
I disagree. You're still just cleaning up somebody else's work. Writing must
involve creating something new that did not exist before. 

You could probably argue that if you took very raw information (like source
code) and then molded it into a more narrative document, that would qualify as
writing since you're producing something totally new from the raw material. 

The "writing cycle" can be boiled down to a simple process (whee, process!).

1. Write
2. Edit
3. Publish 

Writing is the "beginning" point of a project. If somebody else writes a
document and all you do is edit it and clean it up, that is editing - not
writing. Even rewriting sections does not, in my mind comprise writing since
you're still working within somebody else's written infrastructure. 

Andrew Plato

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