What Does an Editor Actually Do?

What Does an Editor Actually Do?

You know those graphics with the six squares labeled with titles like “what my family thinks I do” or “what I think I do” and then always ending with “what I really do”? Well, I’ve been seeing those floating around again (yay, for revolving trends), and I figured it might be time to clarify what… Read more »

The Difference Between Writing and Editing

The Difference Between Writing and Editing

What are revisions? An edit by any other name would be just as damn difficult. But seriously. What do we mean by “writing” and “editing”? Are they really as black and white as the separate words make them appear? Yes, and no.  Writing and editing are forever intertwined, causing debate and confusion over what these… Read more »

Enough Is Enough: When to Stop Editing

Enough Is Enough: When to Stop Editing

There are a lot of questions I see come up over and over again when it comes to self-editing. Perhaps the most difficult of these to answer—how do I know when I can stop editing? Here’s why we get trapped when it comes to this question. There’s no such thing as a perfect book. No… Read more »

What MFAs Miss about the Editing Process

What MFAs Miss about the Editing Process

Browsing Twitter last week, I saw a tweet from a colleague of mine that read, “I’m curious, for writers who have published books, what was the editing process like? Especially curious about your first book. From whom and at what stage did you receive edits? To what degree? Does this question even make sense? Why… Read more »

pay an editor

How Much Should I Pay an Editor to Edit My Book?

I recently saw a post in an editors’ group on Facebook where the original poster was asking for full developmental editing, line editing, formatting, and proofreading of a 40K-word novella. They wanted to publish in less than a month, making this a rush job. And they offered to pay an editor $0.006/word. Multiply that out,… Read more »

freelance editor

The Long Road to Freelance Editor: Part Two

Welcome back, friends. In my last article, I discussed my long and difficult road to becoming a freelance editor. In this part, I’m going to give you some tips and tricks that I’ve learned over the last year and a half about what it takes to run your own freelance editing business. If you haven’t… Read more »

freelance editor

The Long Road to Freelance Editor: Part One

As much as I’ve always wanted to be a writer, I was also fascinated with the business of editing. As a little girl, I would write for hours and fill notebooks with stories of my own worlds. I was convinced I would grow up to be an author. Until one magical day, I stumbled across… Read more »

Title Image: How to Edit an Email

How to Edit an Email

We all read them. We all send them. Some of us have thousands of them hanging around. That’s right, today, we’re going to talk about how to edit an email. Editing personal and business correspondence is a bit different from editing creative work. Let’s take a look. Your Mindset The first step when you edit… Read more »