A few things I have learnt from professional editors

 Until a few years ago I had never engaged with or received feedback from my writing from a professional editor. This is because the only genre I wrote that involved an editor was papers for scientific journals. But the editors of journals are not really editors in the literary sense. They are more like gatekeepers. Colleagues and collaborators may provide feedback on written work, but again they are amateurs.

In the past few years, I have been writing some popular articles and a popular book and have been part of a writing group. In the process, I have engaged with several professional editors. They were getting paid to make my writing better. I have learnt a lot. Here are a few of the things. On the one hand, some of this may not seem that relevant to scientific articles and grant applications. On the other hand, think of the joy of reading a beautiful scientific article, such as those by Roald Hoffmann. Think of how many papers you try to read and you cannot figure out what they are actually about. Also, I think this is particularly relevant to writing review articles, somewhat of a lost art.

Can it be shorter? Most of the writing I have worked with editors on had a strict word limit. I struggled to stay within it. However, the editors forced/helped me in two ways. First, the fixed word limit helped me structure the work and be realistic about the volume of content. For example, for my Very Short Introduction, I broke down the 35,000-word limit to ten chapters, each of about 3500 words. This made the writing quite manageable. Second, editors helped by cutting out content that was not essential, even when I loved it. Third, editors rewrote some of my sentences making them both shorter and clearer. Seeing their improvements I became aware of some of my bad habits.

Find your voice and tell a story. We are all unique and each piece of writing is unique and is making a unique point. Don't try and be someone else. A grant application needs to make the case that your proposed project is unique and that you are uniquely qualified to do it. Your writing will be more engaging and compelling if it expresses your unique perspective and there is a natural narrative.

A few of these suggestions overlap with some of Stephen King's writing tips.