Thanks very much for your response and help.
There isn’t an easier way to take care of this? Editing things doesn’t appeal to me as I’m not at all experienced in using WordPress. I can’t be the first person who wanted to limit a users access to just the ability to edit their own stories and not be able to access the back end workings of their site.
Having said all that I’ll take a look at what you’ve suggested and see if it is something that I can do.