Developmental editors frequently talk about how authors can decide when a ms is ready for professional editing. They make good points about fixing obvious errors before paying for an editor’s attention. I mean, if you know your ending is weak, why are you sending your manuscript to me? Fix the ending, then send the manuscript…
In developmental editing of fiction, most editors, including me, follow a three-part process: we do a first read-through, taking notes about problems we’ve encountered, then we do the main editorial pass(es), then we do a final review before returning the ms to the author/client. The first read-through is generally intended just to help you understand…
The other day in a writers’ group I belong to we had a conversation about the novels we’re reading now. And the most common description of what the group members were reading included the word slog: “I’m slogging through TITLE.” “I’m reading TITLE but it’s a slog.” “I’ve slogged through fifty pages of TITLE; does it…
It’s very common for newer editors to LOVE IT love it love it when they start booking clients far in advance. It’s March and they’re booked through to September! That is fantastic news, isn’t it? They know they’ll have money coming in for the next six months and they can breathe a sigh of relief….
Back when I edited a custom magazine, I assigned and edited a package about an upcoming event (similar to a business conference) which included profiles of some of the attendees and speakers, a how-to-get ready checklist, a travel piece on side trips to take at the location, a celebration of highlights of the event over…
In my previous post on setting work priorities, I closed with the point that once you know what’s important, the rest is just getting it done. Of course it’s not that simple. If it were, editors wouldn’t be asking me how to juggle everything. Defining the Tasks The first thing to remember is that there…
In my previous post on working effectively, I mentioned the need to set your work priorities and to focus on those, instead of scattering your energy frantically trying to do all of the ten million things you could be doing. I didn’t spend much time discussing how to set those priorities, and naturally someone has…
The other day I came across a social media post from an email marketer who said you would outwork 90 percent of your competition just by showing up every day! I nearly sprained my eyeballs from rolling them so hard. If you can outwork your competition just by showing up, you are dealing with very…
Once you’ve been editing for a while, you tend to start rolling your eyes at the newbie mistakes writers make. They name their characters Matt, Mark, Mack, Mick, and Mike and expect readers to be able to tell them apart. They invariably start the story in the wrong place and summarize the most important emotional…
After I posted my thoughts on setting boundaries with clients, an editor asked me to describe how I set expectations ahead of time. Mostly this is part of my project quote, which you can see below. I use slightly different wording for publisher clients to account for the differences in working with them—they aren’t the author,…