“I’m going inside now. Do we have all our things?” I think to myself as I open the sliding glass door that separates my balcony office from my living room office. We’re a freelance editor. We work from home and must spice it up with multiple office-i.
But it’s awkward to write in plural when talking about a singular me. It’s not an identity thing, just that there are two people in my head (and not in a psychotic way; I don’t think).
These people, more than just voices, keep me company and help me sort through my brain. Ever since I was a teen when I experienced those gawky identity- and friend-shifting high school years, I’ve always known that I have to be my best friend. I’m stuck with me for life. Plus, I can’t hang with you if I’m not comfortable hanging with me. With us. So these people in my head—there’s just two of them actually. The writer and the editor. They’re both me, and they can be a nerdy blast to be with. “We’re done editing! Time to play with our own writing!” Grand idea.
So I chill with us all day, sitting in one of the four offices I have created in my one-bedroom apartment. Although I do have a roommate. She has four legs. And she’s, like, Velcroed to our leg all day. And yes, we talk to her too, but when she says something, it always comes out as a high-pitched blue heeler bitching noise. An irritated work wife because we’re editing and she wants to play.
“We’re not doing that right now, Babygirl. We’re working. Take a nap.”
So we write and edit and talk to our dog and ourself out loud. We’re very content in this position because it’s done grand things for us. As in: to be a good writer, you have to be a fantastic editor. Meaning, you have to be able to separate yourself from your writing self—to see the writing for what it is and not as yours. The writer self creates; the editor self employs the science of figuring out how to make what the writer self just wrote sound like something that someone who is not us would want to read.
My writer self negotiates with my editor self all day, and a constant conversation emerges between us about what’s working and what’s not. That separated perspective. We like this. How it results in publications and clients who trust ourself enough to pay us to apply editor self to their personal words. So we like ourself, our brain. Sometimes, our body. And 87.3% of the time, it’s all fun and uplifting. There are hard days, of course, when we hate ourselves for various self-loathing reasons including rejections and lack of work and an uncooperative roommate/coworker. Pep talks galore during these times. “We got this,” a phrase my walls are sick of hearing. But mostly, we’re just being us and we’re fine with that. I might sound a little crazy, but plural me away. It’s how we work—how our writing works.
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