How to Listen to Your Inner Editorial Voices (All of Them)
…and how to let each and every one of them do their authentic “job.”
As a writer across genres—and a creative writing, poetry, and journalism educator and instructor—I know that editing is a gift. And yet, sometimes, I think there’s something wrong with me when I need to edit my own work. The fact that I didn’t manage to beget the perfect draft out the gate? It feels like a fail.
In my heart, I know that’s not true. But here’s the thing. Sometimes I do write something that comes out immaculate at first go. But that’s not the rule. Lately I’ve been pondering: How can we appreciate—and know—our unique inner editorial voices in helping us strengthen our work?
I have come to think of editing my own work as a conglomeration of multiple editorial voices. And I believe we all have at least three, a trifecta council on whom our editorial skills rest:
a “knowing” voice
a “diagnostic” voice
a “worker bee” voice
Together, they lovingly work in tandem to co-create our strongest work by relinquishing judgment and doubt. The key is figuring out how to let these three voices (and maybe more!) collaborate.
The “knowing” editorial voice is our center, our core, our intuition, our innermost, purest and most connective self. It’s here to love us through the writing process. It is the self that can witness our writing and sense how something feels, whether it’s “on” or “off,” “aligned,” “Goldilocks,” or maybe “not quite right, but almost there.”
If something in the writing feels “off” or “misaligned,” this is not because we doubt the strength of the writing itself. This is because our editorial “knowing” voice—our intuition—is able to say that something needs to be—wants to be—adjusted, shifted, and changed.
That’s when we call in the diagnostic voice. The one who can witness the “off”ness or “misalignment” and name what it is. What is it, exactly, that needs to be adjusted and reworked?
Once that happens, next, we call in our “worker bee” editorial voice. That’s the voice that’s equipped with craft skills, tools, and writing techniques.
The “knowing” voice realizes something’s not right; the “diagnostic voice” figures out what’s not working craft-wise; and the “worker bee” provides the craft device or tool that will work instead. The last two are almost like the diagnoser and the prescriber. A whole editorial pharmacy and medicinal healing team.
Together those editorial voices come back to the page, help make the adjustments and shifts needed for the piece to become its more authentic, attuned and aligned self.
Then the “knowing” editorial voice—the intuition, the core, the crux of the self—can say: yes. Or. Not quite. Close. Or far off. But gently, with compassion, curiosity, and care––let’s try again.
And thus, the cycle of our triumvirate consul repeats, and repeats, and repeats.
Let’s break it down with a particular paragraph from my essay “UNHINGING,” which I published in my nonfiction series “my word(s)” on June 18, 2025. The piece is about (re)joining the dating app Hinge—after a six-year hiatus, having previously sworn off dating apps for life.
I create the first Word document for “UNHINGING” on November 14, 2024. The particular paragraph we’ll look at is the fifth paragraph from the top. It reads:
I am someone who—in general—thrives with the IRL meet. Cute. The guy I met at a bar. The guy I met at a bar. The guy I met at a bar. The guy I met at a bar. The guy I met at a bar. The guy who got my number at a coffee shop. The guy who got my number on the subway. The friend of a friend’s girlfriend’s birthday party (at a bar). The guy who slipped me his phone on the back of a receipt while I was at brunch with a friend. THE DUDE WHO GOT HIS MOTORCYCLE, PARKED IT, AND FOLLOWED ME INTO THE RESTAURANT TO ASK FOR MY NUMBER (I learned within a week that I should NOT have given him my number. I did not read the signs!) My ex of four and a half years? We met at an event. And on. And on. And so forth and hence.
It’s punchy. It’s what we call a “nut graf” in journalism, which means the context, background, and grounding in which a piece will anchor itself broadly as it propels ahead. My “knowing” editorial self is able to read this and feel like I’m getting somewhere—but also knows there’s some work the “diagnostic” and “worker bee” voices will have to do.
Much drafting and editing later, now five drafts in, the paragraph is seventh down, with shifts.
For example, the “diagnostic” voice saw that “Cute” as a standalone sentence was too punchy. It said to me—lovingly—let that parenthetical be your inner voice, Caroline, not your outside voice, as much as we like her too (smiley face). Thus, the “worker bee” voice decided “Cute” was best as a parenthetical to better allow the punchy snark to be an inner monologue voice, along with the all-caps content about the various dudes later on.
Like this:
I am someone who—in general—thrives on the IRL meet (cute).
And also this:
The guy who called me “gorgeous” from his motorcycle, got off his motorcycle, parked his motorcycle, and followed me into the restaurant where I was picking up take out to ask for my number (I SHOULD NOT HAVE GIVEN HIM MY NUMBER! I LEARNED THAT QUICKLY! WHICH STEP SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE RED FLAG?!)
I also added a lot of other detail, because my “worker bee” craft editorial voice knows that detail can sometimes help paint a fuller picture, especially in a nut graf like this, especially for a personal essay, especially for punch.
Then, on November 19, I ask a bestie to give it eyes—because sometimes even our most attuned editorial trifecta needs to phone a friend—and I upload the latest draft into a Google Doc.
And then my “knowing” editorial voice knows this: After processing my friend’s extremely helpful and generous feedback, I realize—very loudly—that I have to back-burner this essay entirely. For a while. And go out and live the experiences of being back on Hinge way, way more, before I’m able to write about it. The essay is still in process because so is my life.
Flash forward to May 2025.
I move this paragraph to an entirely new section. It’s now three pages in. Which means that I go through some wild Tetris listening to my inner editorial voice team that entire month.
It’s not until early June, mere days before publishing the piece, that I move the paragraph back to the very beginning, and it ultimately becomes third down; it reads like this:
I am someone who—in general—thrives on the IRL meet (cute). The guy I met at a bar. The guy I met at a bar. The guy, the guy, the guy I met at a bar. The guy who asked for my number at a coffee shop. The guy who asked for my number on the subway (I slipped it to him on a page of a Broadway playbill). The guy who was working the voting polls for the 2022 primaries and asked if I was single when he handed me my ballot and then came over and handed me his phone when I was in the booth. The friend of a friend’s girlfriend at her birthday party (a guy I met at a bar). The guy who slipped me his number on the back of a receipt while I was at brunch with a friend. The guy who asked for my number in the tea aisle at Whole Foods (PLEASE CALL ME!). The guy who called me “gorgeous” from his motorcycle, got off his motorcycle, parked his motorcycle, and followed me into the restaurant where I was picking up take out to ask for my number (I SHOULD NOT HAVE GIVEN HIM MY NUMBER! HE HAS BEEN BLOCKED!). Even my ex of four and a half years—we met at an event. And on. And on. And hence.
How do we get there, dozens of drafts later, after so many months of living it in real time too?
The “diagnostic” editorial voice senses we don’t need five fully spelled out “the guy I met at a bars,” and my “worker bee” editorial voice (pulling from my poetry background) knows that “the guy” repeated three times will do the trick. And with the parenthetical about the motorcycle dude, the “diagnostic” says: he doesn’t deserve that much real estate, and by now, we are at the end of the paragraph. I realize—hear my “knowing” editorial voice gingerly whisper—that we must chop some of that—I can make this part of the paragraph even more succinct too. Succinct = punch.
But it is a give and take—for months!—not only for the paragraph itself, but where the paragraph lives in the piece at large. Because as time goes on, I come full circle. My original impulse in November 2024 is to have this paragraph at the top. Then I move it way, way down. And then it comes back, top of the piece. To where it started.
There is a world where I chastise myself and say this time is a waste! I should have just had the wherewithal to keep it where it was originally, without all of this ridiculous wandering about!
But that’s not how writing works. Drafting and editing can be circuitous. Sometimes moving something somewhere else only to have it return back is what unlocks permission for other things to move around, and for other editorial choices to become crystal clear.
My “knowing” editorial voice works in tandem with the rest of my being. The more I learn to listen to my inner instincts and intuition in life—at large—the better my editing skills become.
And the more I strengthen my “diagnostic” abilities to understand what might be misaligned and why, and the more “worker bee” craft skills and tools I build, the more I’m able to ebb and flow between the knowing and the solutions that can help strengthen my piece to be itself.
Because what is writing—and editing—if not the process of becoming?
PS: The next session of Caroline Rothstein’s beloved class, Deeply Personal, starts this month and there’s just one seat left! Writers consistently describe this class as a rare space where they’re able to go deeper than they thought possible.
