Do people need editors anymore?

Where are you finding traction in your teaching in year four of the generative AI rollout? Maybe you’ve adapted your approaches and assignments, maybe you’re seeing it as a part of some larger tectonic shift, maybe you can’t stand another mention of it, or maybe you’re grieving. All of these reactions are understandable. 

Though I’ve shifted into editing and writing coaching, I haven’t escaped the existential and ethical questions that AI-assisted communication raise. I get asked all the time “how is consulting going for you in the age of ChatGPT?” “Do people really need editors anymore?” I’ve had clients share with me that they’ve used it, and I’ve noticed tell-tale signs in manuscripts from those who haven’t disclosed. I’ve used it myself to suggest stronger parallelism in a complex sentence, ask questions about registering my business, and help me plan a route home from Minnesota to Ohio this summer. 

Much of the conversation on GenAI and writing focuses on how the tools are shaping us, but it’s also worth asking what values and beliefs brought these tools into scholarly writing. Decades of writing instruction on error reduction, well-meaning prescriptions for “best practices,” and publish-or-perish models of productivity have taught us to approach writing as something to get right rather than something to figure out. I wonder, too, whether underneath these institutional structures is a pattern of unaddressed writing anxiety, passed from one generation of writers and teachers to the next. Maybe too many of us didn’t trust ourselves in our writing to begin with and LLMs have come along to exploit that uncertainty.  

And our tolerance for uncertainty is shrinking. I try to remind my family that it's okay not to reach for the phone during dinner to find out whether the moon is bigger than Australia or which is the deadliest living creature. We can sit in wonder for a little while. Or ask ourselves why it’s a worthwhile question, or what we will do with the answer. Writing asks something similar of us: to trust that we can sit with uncertainty, follow a question, get a little lost, and find our way back again. 

So, do people still need editors? Thankfully, yes. I’ve been busy in the best way. Maybe because of GenAI, people appreciate that other people will help them sound the most like themselves. But I do see an unmet need in terms of helping academic writers preserve or rebuild their confidence, feel less anxious during the process, increase follow through, and believe in their ideas. In addition to developmental editing and copyediting, I’m working on developing some new coaching packages for writers. If you want to hear more, please reach out. You can sign up to receive monthly updates directly to your inbox here: https://annie-brubaker-writing-consulting.kit.com