His email was clever and funny. So too (I thought) was my response. I put the two together and sent it to my editor as a witty brief for publication in this little blog.

“I think this is pretty clever,” I wrote, “but I may be kidding myself. I know that sometimes I’m too close to my stuff to know.”

She wrote back: “You’re kidding yourself.”

Here’s the thing: I’ve been trying to “become a writer” since I was in grammar school. I’ve published more than two dozen books and more than a thousand essays. For the last 17 years, I’ve been writing every day. And yet 90% of what I write is garbage.

By garbage I mean not worth saving, let alone publishing.

Today, thanks to the Internet, it’s easier than ever to become a published writer. If you can’t get your work published by any one of the tens of thousands of websites that publish content every day, you can create your own website and self-publish.

But that presents a problem. It’s easier than ever to publish garbage.

In the “old days,” it was difficult to have your work accepted for publication. And if you did, you still had to go through a gauntlet of revisions mandated by an editor – someone whose job was to make sure no garbage went to press.

But these days, very little revising is being done. And that’s because most writing is published without the benefit of a good editor.

I happen to have one. She’s been editing my work – my business essays, my books, my fiction and my poetry – for more than 25 years. I’m lucky. Most writers don’t have that benefit.

What if you don’t? What can you do?