Writing coach gets coached.

It took me 16 years of editorial writing, but last spring I finally became a Wisdom Figure.

Two writers' workshops asked me to make presentations about editorial writing, and I couldn't wait to strut my stuff

Man, did I prepare. I did some reporting and talked with people whose writing I respected, and finally, I had amassed enough material to ease my nervousness.

But the process of thinking about writing, and talking about it, and hanging out for a day with writers attending the workshops taught me something I had come close to forgetting: the simple joy of putting one word after another to form a thought, a scene, a sentence.

I remembered once again the love of words, and the curiosity about technique, and the absolute rush when it all comes together.

The process really brought me back.

I began writing when I was 12 years old. I used to write pages and pages in my journal, the empty page listening better than anyone could - or, at the time, did. I was drawn to writing like an addict yearning for a fix. When I went to the beach, I didn't bring a book; I brought notebooks with blank pages. I wrote on buses and while waiting to see the dentist; I wrote anywhere I could about everything I could think of. It was good training for a future opinion writer.

I still have those notebooks in my attic, the pages yellowing fast, and their contents aren't particularly interesting. But the process of going to writers' workshops made me remember the thrill I once had about writing. I now realize how, too often nowadays, it feels more like - well - work.

I don't want it to feel like work. Ever.

We editorial writers have to know so much, in such detail, about so many issues that it's easy for us to reach for Congressional Quarterly instead of a book with marvelous writing and storytelling such as Angela's Ashes.

We become wonks, for God's sake. We fall into the trap of spending all our time researching instead of thinking about a turn of phrase, turning it this way and that way until it becomes something beautiful.

What we once loved to do becomes labor.

It shouldn't.

Attending the writers' workshops made me fall in love again with the craft. It showed me some of what I knew, and a lot of what I didn't know.

At dinner during the Wilmington Writer's Workshop, Jon Franklin and I were discussing the wonderful writing in Jane Healy's editorials, which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize. Franklin admired the editorials, as do I, and said to me, "You know, those editorials are perfect illustrations of the complication-resolution form of writing."

I nodded, knowingly, and thought to myself, "What in the hell is he talking about?!"

I bought his book to find out. I ended up buying a stack of writing books, joining a listserv for writers who discuss technique, and even signing up with two online dictionaries that send me a word a day to learn.

Sometimes I know the words, and sometimes I don't.

But I'm always grateful to learn.

And grateful, too, to remember again how much I love what we writers do. To recall that 12-year-old who is still a part of me, who would rather scribble in a notebook than do anything else in the world. *

NCEW board member Maura Casey is associate editorial page editor of The Day in New London, Conn. Her e-mail address is [e-mail]