Editors-R-Everybody

If you're a speech writer working in a corporate or government environment, you'll have plenty of ''editors''—probably more than you want or need. Everyone, it seems, is a frustrated writer and cannot resist the impulse to edit someone else's hard work.

Peggy Noonan, the talented writer who crafted some of President Reagan's best speeches, relates some of her White House experiences in her book, What I Saw at the Revolution. In the book she tells of writing a speech for the president to deliver to students in Shanghai. In her first draft of the speech, she included this paragraph:

My young friends, history is a river that takes us as it will. But we have the power to navigate, to choose direction, and make our passage together. The wind is up, the tide is high, and the opportunity for a long and fruitful journey awaits us. Generations hence will honor us for having begun the voyage...

Ms. Noonan relates that a State Department functionary, in reviewing the draft, had numerous changes, including elimination of the metaphor of history as a river. His reason was that the metaphor was ''politically unhelpful'' because, in his words, ''the 'history is a river' claim is more in line with standard Marxian theory regarding historical determination than it is with the idea that man can affect his fate.''

''A speech,'' Ms. Noonan writes, ''is a fondue pot, and everyone has a fork. And I mean everyone.''

I have been fortunate in that for most of the speeches I have written, the process involved working directly with the speaker. That, however, has not invariably been the case. I recall being asked to write a speech for a corporate CEO to deliver to his company sales force. When I arrived at what I expected to be the initial interview with the speaker, I was astonished to find that the CEO wasn't there. Instead, I faced seven executives, each expecting to have ''input'' into my ''output.''

I wrote the speech without having interviewed the speaker. When the draft came back to me, it had detailed comments and heavy editing from all seven executives. Most of the comments were worthless, and some were in direct conflict with others. I accepted the ones that were useful, discarded the others, and found a way to get my draft to the CEO without sending it through the vice-presidential gauntlet again. If I had been forced to consider all the ''input,'' I might have been unable to ''outget'' the speech in time for the meeting. That kind of editing you don't need.