Independent Writers vs. Polished Essays
A couple of weeks ago, I received the following message in my LinkedIn Messaging from a professional in the college prep field whom I had never met:
“I took a look at your work. … I like how you focus on building independent writers rather than just polishing essays at the end. That’s something I think is often missing in this space.”
I thought that his observation was spot-on because ever since I founded my business in 2014, I have always focused on building independent writers—I have never provided traditional tutoring services (i.e., help with school writing assignments, etc.) or college application essay editing services, both of which focus primarily on polishing essays, because they are Band-Aid solutions to writing problems.
Somewhat regularly, I have parents contact me who are looking to help their child or teen get an “A” on a school paper and they try to get me to add “quick-fix” services to my service offerings. When that happens, I do my best to educate the parent and get them to understand that in the long run, what is going to matter the most, from a writing standpoint, is that their child or teen becomes an independent, strong writer, and unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to that process.
Everyone needs to eventually become an independent writer. Let’s not delay that process for our kids and teens by polishing their writing for them, hiring someone to help them polish it, or worse yet, hiring someone to polish it for them. Let’s instead identify the holes in their writing foundations now and start filling them in now so that our sons and daughters don’t need us or writing tutors to help them get “A’s” on middle school-, high school-, and college-level papers—they can earn those “A’s” by themselves and be proud of their writing and themselves.
Founder & Owner of ★ W O R D S, LLC