Why Providing Clear Guidance Matters for Editors
In the Club Ed membership group, we were discussing a (published) how-to book aimed at writers. One of the editors mentioned how the information was presented in a confusing way and that this made it difficult for her to continue reading. Then she remarked, “My mind is generally in a state of burden.”
I don’t know a single one of us who didn’t feel that remark in their bones. Everyone is in a state of burden.
Why Providing Clear Guidance Matters for Editors
THIS is why I harp so much on making your queries and guidance crystal clear and easy to understand when you’re editing. This is why providing clear guidance matters for editors because your clients are in a state of mental burden. If they have to decode your cryptic comments in order to understand your edit, they’re probably not going to do so. They may not even reach out for clarification. See: “My mind is generally in a state of burden.”
Keep this in mind from your first encounter with a potential client to the receipt of your final payment from them.
Help your clients succeed by checking that they understand your policies and expectations, remind them when a booked edit is coming up, ensure that your edit outlines a doable and cohesive revision (rather than overwhelming the AU with a laundry list of a hundred things going wrong), and include the next steps when you deliver your edit even if you’ve already described them previously.
This isn’t hand-holding and “doesn’t anyone know how to adult anymore?” This is recognizing that we are all dealing with a lot, all the time, and a little understanding goes a long way. The ability to show your best self (and work) to authors and clients is why providing clear guidance matters for editors.
Tips for Editors & Writers
-
How to Read Like an Editor
Book development editors don’t read books the way readers do. To sharpen your developmental editing skills, you need to learn to read like an editor does (instead of the way a reader does). When you’re a reader, you enter the author’s world. You willingly suspend your disbelief in order to experience this world. That doesn’t…
-
Story Editing as a Second Career
When I teach developmental editing classes, I get a lot of students transitioning from other careers. They’re often lawyers, social workers, and teachers – though I’ve also taught actors, accountants, and engineers, among others. What they have in common is that they love stories and want to explore whether book editing (story editing/developmental editing) is…
-
Getting Started Teaching How-To Classes
If you’re a developmental editor, you’ve probably occasionally thought about teaching a class for writers—perhaps as a means to let people get to know you before they invest in the expense of a full developmental edit or because you want to help them solve some common writing problems before they finish their first draft or…
