Musing

What it Takes to be an Editor

KWhipkey 14 Comments

Now that I’m becoming more known in the literary community, I’ve had people approach me for advice on how to break into an editing career. They all have this bright-eyed illusion of what being an editor entails, envisioning (as I did) days filled with nothing but reading. Sounds glamorous, doesn’t it? Every book lover’s dream job. But let’s have a candid (and snarky!) discussion about the reality of being an editor. Because that pretty image in your head is nothing like the real thing.

A lot of people falsely believe that writing and editing are parallel careers. They’re not. They’re more like distant cousins than the sibling status everyone thinks. If you enjoy the process of creation, editing is not for you. If you love reading, devouring books like life-saving sustenance, editing is not for you. And if you like entertainment that keeps your brain active and stimulated for hours, editing is not for you. If, however, you love puzzles, methodical routines, and helping others, then maybe you’re fit to be an editor.

The truth is, editing’s hard. It’s monotonous, dull, repetitive, and there is absolutely no glory in it. It’s messy, annoying, and time-consuming. And it uses absolutely none of your creative juices. It’s analytical, more than anything, relying on thought processes normally associated with math and logic, rather than those involved with writing. It requires a completely different skill set, and, contrary to popular belief, good writers do not necessarily make good editors. And vice versa.

The literary world is the only one I know of that doesn’t clearly differentiate between its specialized skills, lumping them into one single category — wordsmith. No one would expect a dentist to be able to perform heart surgery, so why can’t we figure out that editing and writing aren’t the same thing? Yes, they’re both grounded in a love for words. And both do conform to the rules of the English language (most of the time). But that’s pretty much where the similarities stop.

So what does it take to be an editor? Let’s find out.
 

Requirement #1: No Life (Workaholic)

 
You know those nights and weekends, holidays, family and friends? Kiss them all goodbye. If you want to be an editor, you better be a workaholic, because otherwise, you’ll be buried up to your eyeballs before you can blink. And don’t think that’s temporary. Oh no, you will never again have a moment to yourself. Your inbox will be filled to the breaking point every time you log in. Your morning run, every meal you eat, and even long car trips will become reading time. And sleep? Yeah, you’d probably get more of that if you’d popped out that baby your mom’s been nagging you to have.

Every single second of every day from the moment you get your first assignment will be filled with something. And if, God forbid, you take so much as an afternoon off, you’ll spend the next two weeks trying to climb back on top of the mountain.

Editors have one of the highest burn-out rates of any job on the market. If you survive past two years, you’re considered hard-core. Because none of us get to do what everyone somehow assumes we do: sit in our offices, leisurely sipping coffee and reading to our heart’s content. In fact, if we get to read at all during the day, it’s probably at home, or crammed into the fifteen empty minutes between tasks. The majority of an editor’s day actually consists of answering emails, planning out structural edits, line edits, project management, more emails and then more line edits. Reading’s at the bottom of the list, unfortunately.

So if you’re an anti-social, agoraphobic insomniac with a workaholic tendency, editing will be the perfect job for you. The rest of us have to learn how to juggle life and work. And sadly, life almost always loses.
 

Requirement #2: OCD (Detail-Oriented)

 
Editing is highly detail-oriented. It’s slow and tedious, and during the course of a single project, you’ll read each chapter so many times you could nearly recite the thing verbatim by the end. So being slightly OCD helps.

There’s a strange (as in sick) sense of satisfaction to be found in surgically removing and altering the smallest things (things normal humans don’t notice) in a sentence. As an editor, you don’t just gloss over everything, you hone it, until there’s absolutely no better way that statement could be phrased. There’s not an ounce of fluff left in the entire manuscript, and, by George, you made sure that thing sings! How long did it take you to do it? Here’s the kicker: about 6-8 months (that includes the amount of time spent back and forth in revisions with the actual author. Because, you know, editors don’t actually write the books). And how long does it take a reader to read those beautifully honed words? About a week, if you’re lucky. I actually watched someone breeze through a project I’d slaved on for nearly a year in a single afternoon!

The point here is that editors are a strange breed of OCD (ahem, I mean detail-oriented) individuals who hold themselves and their authors to a crazy standard of perfect, and will accept nothing less. If you’re not willing to read a manuscript 52 times, invest upwards of 6 months of your life into someone else’s work, then walk away. You’re not one of us.
 

Requirement #3: Skills (Not Just Grammar, Folks)

 
This should be a no-brainer. Clearly, an editor needs skills, right? But which skills?

There’s an assumption out there that editing consists of one thing — fixing grammar. Editors are all a bunch of pompous English professors who couldn’t sell their own writing, and so, bitterly hand down judgement on everyone’s inability to follow the rules of the English language. In short, we’re grammar Nazis, and that’s it. That assumption is incorrect. And why so many writers get taken advantage of by shoddy editors who do nothing but fix superficial punctuation and spelling mistakes. (**Ducks from the impending barrage of hatred.**)

A real editor does so much more than fix your grammar. They’ll do that too, but more importantly, they’ll fix your story in its entirety. From plot holes, character development, and timeline re-sequencing, to sentence smoothing, and fact/detail cross-referencing, an editor is a master storyteller. Not only do they fully understand the various narrative methods and their uses, but they do all this without compromising the writer’s voice. They’re chameleons, morphing into a version of the author and enhancing that person’s style so that no trace of the editor is visible to the outside world. (I mentioned there was no glory in editing, right? All the applause and accolades go solely to the author — as they should. You don’t exist to the world of readers.)

True editors can hold an entire book in their heads, shifting and reorganizing the narrative threads as needed. And the really good ones can do this with multiple projects at once. It’s a rare skill, and one that will instantly mark a professional from an amateur. This is the thing that the writers-turned-editors can’t compete with. What the grammar Nazis can’t ever hope to provide. This is the true skill of an editor. So the question is, does this sound like you? If yes, then congratulations, you’re an editor. If what I’ve said sounds like mumbo-jumbo or makes you cringe even the tiniest bit, then adios! You’re better off doing something else.
 

Requirement #4: Passion (Passion Trumps the Suckage)

 
This is the last requirement for becoming an editor, but I’d dare say it’s the most important one. Why? Because passion is what makes it all worthwhile; it’s what trumps all the suckage. As you can see, editing is kind of a sucky job. I mean, for some of us, it’s a calling, and we love it through and through. But to the outside world, it looks brutal, horrible, and leaves you wondering why, in God’s name, anyone would ever want to do it. The answer is pretty simple though: passion. Passion for storytelling, for books, and for the people who write them. If you don’t have this, you’ll never make it as an editor. You might survive for a little while. You may even enjoy it at first. But eventually, the incessant schedule will wear you down and you’ll walk away.

How do you know if you have it? The passion? I’m not sure. I don’t think there’s a quantifiable way to tell. But I’ll leave you with this to ponder:

Writers often talk about how writing is the best part of their day. How it’s a cathartic release, a joy. For them, the creation process is the most beautiful thing. But for an editor, a 100% born-to-be editor, it’s not. That joy will come from the part of the process every writer loathes. Where writers find relaxation pouring words onto a page, you’ll find it in rearranging those words. Where they find joy breathing life into new stories, you’ll find it in fixing them. To you, the best part will be feeling all those intricate puzzle pieces click into place, and then watching, like a proud teacher, as your author and their book graduate to take their place in the world of success.

It’s not a job for everyone, but if you have the skills and the passion, (if you can’t imagine yourself doing anything else,) then it just might be for you. I’m definitely 100% editor. Are you?

A Writer’s Resolutions: 2014 Edition

KWhipkey 4 Comments

I’m back! Did you miss me? 😉

Last year, I wrote a post about resolutions. This year, I’ve decided to continue that tradition and start an annual feature where I’ll detail my goals for the coming year, and look back on what I accomplished (or didn’t, more likely) from the previous list. I’m not talking about the usual suspects — the “I want to lose weight” (although, that is high on my list this year), “I want to be debt free” (a girl can dream right?), “I want to marry a prince and live on a floating island in the clouds” type of resolutions. No, I’m talking about the specific list that all writers make.

If you write, chances are this one features prominently: “I want to be published”. But like I pointed out in last year’s post, that has about as much chance of success as marrying that prince with the floating island. You need to be more specific than that. When you break a resolution into the individual steps you’ll need to accomplish it, it starts to look more real. To prove a point, I tried my own advice and created these resolutions for 2013:
 

Writing Resolutions 2013

 

  • Finish the rough draft of Unmoving
  • Upload Chapters of Unmoving every two weeks to Wattpad & Authonomy
  • Revise and Re-publish The Bardach, Spinning & Confessions via Createspace/Amazon KDP
  • Compile brief synopses of all plot bunnies
  • Write, Edit & Publish one new short story

 
How did I stack up? Well, I didn’t. According to that list, I accomplished exactly . . . nothing. Unmoving still isn’t finished (in fact, I technically haven’t written on it since July), it’s not featured on Wattpad or Authonomy (yet), my short stories languish somewhere in forgotten-land, and the only new thing I wrote was 1/16th of a novel that’s probably the worst quality ever thanks to Camp Nano. But that doesn’t mean the resolutions themselves were bad. It just means that I suck at following my own advice. 😉

2013 was actually riddled with writing-related achievements, they just weren’t the ones I expected. I’m now the Editorial Director for REUTS Publications; I’ve reviewed so many amazing (and unpublished) manuscripts I’ve lost count; I’ve been involved in numerous writing contests, Twitter events, and saw a couple of the books I helped edit reach publication; I’ve made invaluable connections with others in the industry, many of whom I now view as friends; and most importantly, I created a way to share Unmoving while it’s still being written! So 2013 was by no means a dull year on the creativity front. In fact, I think it was the busiest I’ve ever been. And I loved every minute of it!

Where does that leave me as we head into 2014? Optimistic as always. The new year sparkles with possibility, and I’m nothing if not superb at creating to-do lists. (It’s the finishing them part I’m not so great at.) So, in true New Year’s fashion, here’s my ambitious list for the coming year:
 

Writing Resolutions 2014

 

  • Finish Unmoving (Kind of inevitable now, since I have a bi-weekly deadline to keep my hiney motivated.)
  • Revise and Re-publish The Bardach, Spinning & Confessions via Createspace/Amazon KDP (Yep, I’m recycling, what of it?)
  • Compile brief synopses of all plot bunnies (I really need to get this one done. Some of those little buggers are starting to escape!)
  • Write, Edit & Publish one new short story (Really not sure why I failed at this one. It’s not an insanely difficult thing to do . . .)
  • Quit The Dreaded Day Job so I can focus on editing & writing full time (Probably not likely, but I’m shooting for the stars. They say if you write it down, it’ll happen. So hear that, writing gods? Make it happen!)

 
There’s a plethora of other things I could add to that list, but then I’d start straying from the realistic goals to the ones I know I’ll never complete. 5 seems to be a comfortable level of possible for me, anything beyond that and I may as well crumple the whole thing up and chuck it now. I’d love to say that I’ll finish more than one novel, that I’ll write a new short story every week, or that I’ll manage to do any of the other things full-time writers do. But the reality is that none of that can happen until I achieve resolution #5. Thankfully, I do see that happening in my near future, thanks to the support of my freelance clients (you guys rock!) and my work with REUTS. Will it happen this year, though? That remains to be seen. 😉

Okay, it’s your turn! What feat of writing greatness do you want to accomplish this year? And how did you do with your resolutions from last?

(P.S. Thank you to everyone who entered my 2013 Holiday Giveaway. Your support made it, by far, the most successful giveaway I’ve ever done. Unfortunately, there can only be 3 winners though. So please give a big round of congratulations to those lucky people: Alexandra Perchanidou, Carly Drake, & Rachel Oestreich! You’ll be receiving a paperback copy of Echoes of Balance by Cally Ryanne. To everyone else, don’t worry, there will be more chances to win something awesome coming May 2014. So stick around! I’ll try to make it worth your while. 😉 )

The Anatomy of a Successful Short Story

KWhipkey 2 Comments

Short stories. Some people love them, others can’t stand them. But no one can deny they’re an entirely different creature from novels.

This week, I’ve been judging entries for the ProjectREUTSway competition held during the month of November. Buried amid 144 short stories, I started to think about what exactly makes one “successful”. I think most of you know by now that I, myself, published 3, so this is a topic that hits very close to home. It’s also one I’ve never really stopped to think about. Until now. Because, let’s face it, short stories are strange. Similar to novels and yet completely dissimilar, they require a certain — almost magic — recipe to really shine. I don’t believe in the undefinable though, (at least not when it comes to writing) so let’s see if we can’t identify the exact ingredients that make short stories such a unique form of storytelling.

Short stories are often considered a novelist’s training wheels; the idea being that someone can learn the basics of storytelling through short stories and then graduate into novels. But that’s not exactly what happens. Because, in reality, they require two different skill sets to pull off well. A short story is not a truncated novel, nor is a novel an elongated, rambling short story. Rarely can the concept for one be turned successfully into the other. And yet people still try. Why? Because short stories have been given a bad rap. Novels take all the glory, leaving short stories to rot in creative writing jail like fiction offenders. They’re looked down on as an inferior form of narrative, an eighth grade diploma to the novel’s PHD. After all, the only difference between them is length, right?

Wrong.

There are three things a successful short story must have: brevity, focus, and telling. Yes, you heard me, telling. But before you get your knickers in a bunch, let me explain further.
 

1. Brevity

 
Novelists are taught the value of brevity. But even the most refined novels still sprawl, meandering through details and settings and other things short story authors simply can’t afford. Literally every word matters in a short story. No detail is extraneous. If we mention the light blue collar on a random cat, you can bet that collar is important somehow.

The same holds true for the words themselves. Novelists are allowed to write sentences like this:

She paused, grabbing the handle of the stainless steel refrigerator and pulling it open with a subtle flick of her wrist.

(Hey, no comments on the quality. Clearly, I know that sentence is atrocious. I’m proving a point. 😉 )

That’s 21 words to say this:

She opened the refrigerator door.

Yes, that may be a bit exaggerated, but you see what I mean, I hope. When you only have maybe 5000 words of space, every letter has to serve a purpose. Successful short stories know this, and the language/storytelling is as finely honed as a scalpel. If it doesn’t somehow move the plot along, impart valuable information or absolutely have to exist, it doesn’t.
 

2. Focus

 
I’m a firm believer that every story should have a message, a reason for existing. But maybe that’s because I started out as a short story author. Whenever I come up with an idea, I identify the core message first, before the setting, characters, or even plot. For example, The Bardach is a story about identity, Spinning is about fate, and Confessions is about losing faith. Even Unmoving has a focal point. At its core, its about compassion. This type of focused narrative is one of the more notable differences between a short story and a novel.

Short stories are single-minded. Like a starving man spotting food, they keep their eyes on the prize. None of this wandering off into detours, flashbacks, subplots or other shenanigans that novels get away with. Nope, they have one message, one plot, one climatic moment that everything points to. And, interestingly enough, short stories are typically driven by an event, rather than a character. The focus is on the action, not the person doing it.

How does this translate into our recipe for success? Well, you’ll be able to feel the underlying drive in a really good short story. You’ll walk away from it remembering the message, not necessarily the characters. So make darn sure you know what you’re saying, both literally and subtextually.
 

3. Telling

 
All right. I know this is the one you were waiting for. After all the times “show, don’t tell” has been beaten into your head, you simply can’t believe I’d actually stand here and advocate telling, can you? Well, I’m not really.

See, the thing is, showing is still 100% better than telling. But, telling is allowed in a short story. Due to the limited amount of time you have to impart your narrative, there’s really no way around it. You don’t have the luxury of wasting thousands of words, or even hundreds, showing us the back-story. Nor can you illustrate anything directly outside the timeline of the main event, regardless how important it may be. So that only leaves one option — telling. You should still avoid the dreaded info-dump if you can, but slipping in the occasional line of summary, or a paragraph of back-story, won’t automatically earn you peer derision. Well, most of the time, anyway.

Successful short story authors are masters of knowing when to tell and when to show. (Which, by the way, I am not. Just wanted to clarify that in case anyone thought I was going to be cocky and throw myself on that list.) They give you just enough information — typically in the form of telling — to make their worlds/characters feel as fleshed out as a novel’s, but not so much that you really notice. They cover a lot of ground in a really short amount of time, making this the hardest skill on the list. It actually requires mastery of the other two to pull off, which is why I listed it last.

And there you have it; the anatomy of a successful short story. Learn how to control these three elements and your short fiction will stand out in a pile like little beacons. And let’s all try to stop viewing short stories as the lesser form of fiction. They’re not inferior. Just different.

The 5 Stages of Writing on a Deadline

KWhipkey Leave a comment

We’ve done a lot of serious posts lately here on Nightwolf’s Corner. Awesomely helpful, yes, but serious. So this week, I wanted to mix it up and create something humorous. But as I was busy dusting off my sarcasm, gearing up for a good old-fashioned snark-fest, I stumbled on a fortuitously timed post by one of my favorite, soon-to-be-famous authors. See, he’s a snarky son-of-a-gun too, and while I could have put my rusty skills to good use, he beat me to the punch. He even used a similar topic to my as-yet-unwritten post. So either he somehow magically hacked into my brain, or it’s that “great minds” phenomena we always hear about. Either way, his post had me ROFL-ing, LOL-ing and all those other acronyms for laughing we never say in real life. So I thought, why not share it with all of you? You’ve hung around me long enough that I’m sure you’ll appreciate the brilliance of his wit as much as I do.

Next week, I promise, original material is coming your way. I’ll be dissecting the anatomy of a short story in the literary equivalent of science class. But in the meantime, take a break from the serious and enjoy!

I present to you: Drew, master of sarcasm. Take it away, Drew!

 

Photo of Drew Hayes

 

The 5 Stages of Writing on a Deadline

By Drew Hayes

 
Writing, much like grief, moves in phases. The ideal process for artistic creation is the slow, gentle growth of an idea, watching it bloom from mere idle thoughts into a cohesive, beautiful flower. Then, of course, there’s writing on a deadline. This process is more akin to trying to steer a lawnmower while your drunken uncle fights you for the wheel and a swarm of honeybees swoops about, rightfully angry about the beer bottle your aforementioned uncle threw into their hive. (If this analogy made no sense to you, congratulations on not living in the country.) Point being, writing on a deadline is a crazy, often senseless process that feels as though you’re being swarmed by painful distractions. Though, to be fair, in a perfect analogy you’d be the drunk uncle. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
 

Stage 1: Stupidity, a.k.a., I Can Totally Handle This

 
This is a beautiful stage, a wonderful place that you’ll find yourself at time and again. You’ve found a project that you’re suited for and been accepted into the position. You have zero fear you can handle this, because the magic of repression has given you the power to block out what your last project was like. You do everything right in this phase; you make an outline, schedule time specifically dedicated to work on this project, and even make a step-by-step checklist. You are fearless. You’ve got this shit down cold.

In fact, you’ve got it down so cold, you’re not even stressing about it. Until that window you set up to work on the project gets chomped away by angrier, more demanding tasks that are further along in the process and soon, all too soon, you’ve hit crunch time. Now you really need to write. So you finally enforce that window and sit down to truly punch out stuff on the keyboard.
 

Stage 2: Holy Shit, a.k.a., What Was I Thinking?

 
Nothing. Not one idea. Come on, you can do this. You had a billion ideas when you took on the project. There has to be one left in your brain. Just one. You’ll do anything. Come on. Focus. Foooocus. Don’t look at the spot on the wall. It’s not mold. Because you live in a dry climate and mold doesn’t look like finger smudges, that’s how I know. And now you’re cleaning the “mold” even though that’s totally not what it was. Feel better? Oh, hey, idea! No, not about the project, but related to the project. Remember that outline you did? Maybe there are some ideas in that.

Huh . . . this is wordy, detailed, and totally useless. Look at Point #4: draw out deeper meaning of previous subject. They’re all like that. Everything hinges on something else, and there’s no start point. Okay, deep breaths. At least you’ve got a plan if you do ever think of a starting point. Look, there’s an old truth to writing that if you’re stuck, just write anyway. Just put words down and sooner or later something cohesive will form. Type gibberish if you must, just type something.
 

Stage 3: Desperation, a.k.a., Shit’s ‘Bout To Get Real

 
Well, it’s the last day before the project is due, and you’ve written 30,000 words of gibberish. I’ll be honest, I’m impressed with the dedication, though I had hoped eventually real words might come out. Still, let’s not give up hope yet. Maybe you can still pull something off. I mean, you’ve done this before. Go look at notes from old projects. Perhaps the secret to breaking through your block lies in there.

Wow . . . these are . . . wow. I’m around ninety percent sure having this combination of words written down is a felony, along with a serious cry for help. Also, a good half of that isn’t English. Scratch that, it isn’t even language, at least nothing a healthy mind could identify as such. No, don’t throw it out, there are children in the world who could stumble across this. Burn it. Cleanse it with fire and hope there can be forgiveness in your next life. Only when that’s done can we continue to scour for the key to unlocking inspiration.

Okay, those pages are gone, though it took them a curiously long time to burn, and the whole house smells like smoke and regret. After a bit more digging, you’ve found different sets of notes from your last project. Let’s take a gander and see what you’ve got.

Cursing.

Cursing.

Teardrop stains.

Enthusiastic cursing.

A cocktail recipe.

Eh, what the hell, seems like as good a time as any to progress to the next step.
 

Step 4: Booze, a.k.a., Hang On Just A Minute . . . I Know What I’m Talking . . . Here Shush . . . Just Let Me Say One More Thing And I Will — Zzzzzzz

 
If it was good enough for Hemingway, it’s good enough for you. Furiously hurling vodka down your throat like there’s a gasoline fire in your belly and you have no concept of how putting out a fire works, you take an alcoholic wrecking ball to your sober consciousness. Soon the ideas begin to flow. Unfortunately, they aren’t ideas directly related to the project you’re working on. No, texting your ex is a bad idea; they don’t want to hear from you. I don’t care how unhappy you think they looked in their wedding photo on Facebook, they don’t want to hear from — aaaand you’re texting anyway.

Several drinks later, you’ve worked through nearly all the alcohol stocked in your meager bar, save for the break-in-case-of-emergency last resort: Tequila. You know you shouldn’t do it, but by Faulkner you’ve come this far, and, at this point, you’d rather go down in flames than burn away gently. You guzzle straight from the bottle, downing the well-grade liquor in less time than it took for the under-paid clerk to slap it on the sale shelf. This is going to be bad.

The next few hours pass in a blur. Only snippets and highlights will remain once the alcohol has run its course:

You remember trying to order a pizza on the phone, only for the clerk to consistently reiterate that you have dialed a dry-cleaner. You are not fooled by his lies.

You know you uploaded a clip to YouTube. Unfortunately, you have no memory of what was on it, the name it was under, or even the account you used to post it. You will spend the next six months trying to find it and/or hoping you cannot be identified by the footage. That hope will eventually be dashed.

You fill more pages with the cursed writing, the arcane script that made those previous pages so difficult to burn. This time you hide them so that your sober-self cannot unmake your hard work. There can be no more interruptions, not with the rising so near.

You sit down at your computer, staring at the monitor that mocks your literary impotence with an unsullied white screen. You stick your tongue out at it. This is the last memory of the night.
 

Stage 5: Completion, a.k.a., Who The What Now?

 
As you rise slowly from the keyboard, you immediately become aware of three things. Firstly, you have a headache that would send lesser drinkers to their graves. Secondly, you slept with your face on the keyboard and will wear this waffle iron-esque mark of shame for several hours. Lastly, and most importantly, your project is complete. The crisp, neatly edited words stare back at you from the monitor, all mockery quieted. You read through them just to be sure, but everything is germane to the topic, well-worded, and grammatically correct.

You send it off to the client without asking too many questions. Better not to know, you assure yourself. Better not to ask what exactly those pages you wrote signify. Better not to wonder just what it is you might have traded away in a fit of drunken desperation.

Nope, instead you’re off to get a shower and a well-deserved bagel. Maybe you’ll even go see if there are any new projects you might be a good fit for. After all, with this beast done, you’ve got a lot of free time, and you really should try and stay productive.

***

For more of Drew’s deadpan hilarity, please check out his author page and follow him on Twitter.
Also, keep an eye out for his side-splitting debut novel, The Utterly Uninteresting & Unadventurous Tales of Fred, The Vampire Accountant — available Summer 2014!!!

I’d also like to send a special thanks and shout-out to V of Veronica Park’s Space for letting me syndicate this post from her fantastic When Writers Go Wrong Series. She’s got a bunch more, so if you enjoyed this one, head on over and check out the others. They’ll be running through the end of December. 🙂

Self-Editing Tips From an Editor

KWhipkey 25 Comments

It’s no secret that writers loathe the editing process. With its tedious attention to grammar rules you tried to forget as soon as you graduated, repetitive methodologies that make anyone’s brain numb, and general snail’s pace, it’s no surprise that it pales in comparison to the joy of creating. But it’s a necessary evil. One that a strange few of us actually enjoy and decided to make a profession, creating the editor/writer bond we know so well. That doesn’t exonerate you from having to edit, though.

Surprisingly, I’ve actually seen the statement (more than once) that writers don’t need to worry about things like grammar and spelling. That’s the editor’s job; they’ll clean it up. (Every time someone says this, another editing muse disintegrates into ash from the horror.) No, actually, that’s not our job. It’s yours. Yes, editors (especially freelance editors) are more forgiving of the occasional typo and drunk-sounding sentence than your average reader, but that doesn’t mean they want to sludge through something that isn’t even as legible as your 4th grade history paper. And if your 4th grade teacher made you proofread, what makes you think an editor standing between you and publication, between you and being paid for your work, wouldn’t expect the same thing?

Exactly. They do.

But that doesn’t mean editing has to be as painful as a self-lobotomy. In fact, I’ve given tips to get you through the revision process before. (Divorce Your Words; Save Your Story) It’s a topic that bears repeating though, so today, I’m going to give you another set of helpful insights, not from the perspective of a writer (like that previous post was) but from that of an editor.

(Hold on a moment while I swap my writer hat for my editor one . . . Okay. Ready.)

1. Step Back

 

No, I’m not bastardizing “step off” so don’t get your panties in a bunch. Step back is a concept from the art world. In fact, it’s one of the first things you learn at art school. (Yes, you learn stuff at art school. Shocking, I know.) The idea is that an artist can’t clearly see the entirety of their work when they’re hunched over it and it’s about 6 inches from their face, so they have to “step back” to change their perspective and see their work the way the world does. Now it makes sense, huh?

The first step in self-editing is finding a way to create that shift in perspective, to see the work you’ve poured your heart into for the past year in a different way. We’re too close to it during the creation phase, viewing it like an overprotective mother turning a blind eye to their kid’s flaws. You have to break that connection before you can even begin to analyze your work objectively.  You need to step back.

The easiest way to do that is simply to shove your manuscript in a drawer for a few days and avoid it like a note from a debt collector trying to repo your car. I recommend a bare minimum of 48 hours, but a week to a month would be better. That allows the warm, fuzzy glow of creation to fade away and stark reality to set in. If you can’t afford to take the time off, then simply changing the mode of viewing can help. Download it onto an eReader or print it out. Even just move to the Starbucks two blocks away instead of the one next to your house. The change of venue will automatically clear your perspective of any lingering rosy tint and allow you to see more clearly.

2. Ignore the Details

 
Editing is synonymous with comma hunting, spell-check, and word choice, right? Wrong. So many writers (and more than a few editors) dive right into the detail work, thinking all they have to do is clean up the grammar, completely skipping over a very crucial step — structural editing. Bypassing this is like trying to repair a broken bone with makeup. All you end up with is a mangled limb painted like a hooker. Offensive, maybe, but it gets the point across, no?

At this stage in the process, no one cares if you spelled “definitely” wrong, or have a bazillion commas in all the wrong places. Ignore all that. Look deeper, at the story itself. If the structure isn’t working, there’s no point in polishing. That lump of coal’s not turning into a diamond. The only way to fix it is to become a story surgeon, diagnosing and repairing things that are otherwise fatal to your chances of publication. How? Like this:

Take that fresh perspective you earned in step 1 and read through your manuscript from an aerial view, glossing over all the details. You’ll fix them later. Right now, you want to focus on things like pacing, character motivations, world development, scene transitions and narrative sequence. What’s the message of your book? Is that coming through clearly? Do the characters feel like fully fleshed-out people, or cardboard cut-outs? Are the scenes in the right order or does shuffling a few around improve the plot’s progression? These are the kinds of questions you should be asking. Trust your instincts as a reader. We’ve all been programmed to know when a story works and when it doesn’t. And don’t be afraid to make a giant mess; you can stitch it all back together afterward.

3. Murder Your Habit Words

 
Habit words are insidious, riddling your manuscript like a cancer, so before you send your book off to the cosmetic surgeon (aka, your editor) for that much-needed facelift, you need to eradicate them. (Don’t ask why my favorite analogy for editing is medical. I don’t know.) Don’t feel bad, everyone has them. They’re like comfort food, something we turn to without even realizing. My habit words are “was”  and “so.” I’m sure I have others, but that’s all I’m admitting to. 😉

Other common ones are “that,” “had,” and “actually.” It can also be a phrase like “for a moment” or “roll his/her/their eyes.” Pretty much anything you find repeating over and over again qualifies as a habit word. Ideally, you should try to avoid repeating words on the same page or even the same chapter! The English vocabulary is huge; use it to your advantage. But without being pretentious about it. Rarely will you find a word that doesn’t have at least one synonym. So before you go to the next step, arm that delete button with a hefty dose of radiation and go hunting for your habit words. You can’t kill them all, but you’ll be surprised at how even just this small tweak can drastically improve the smoothness of your prose.

4. Rhythm’s in the Details

 
Now you get to go through your manuscript with a fine-toothed comb, copyediting line by line until it’s as perfect as you can make it on your own. This includes things like fixing rocky sentences, condensing wordy parts, simplifying convoluted phrasing, fixing grammar mistakes and just general tweaking for rhythm and smoothness.  This is what people picture when they hear “editing.” It’s the tedious part that will make you want to poke your own eyes out just so you never have to read that chapter ever again. It’s repetitive and monotonous, but it’s like sending your book to the gym. Each pass will trim a little more of the fat until your manuscript is a lean, efficient piece of storytelling. At which point you send it to an editor and the whole process starts over.

That’s right. I just outlined what a professional editor does. (With the exception of #1.)

So, why, if these are all steps you can do yourself, do editors exist? Because they provide objectivity. Even a self-editing master won’t be able to catch everything. Writers can never truly disconnect from their work, can never view it with complete objectivity, because they know the story and what they were trying to convey. An editor provides clarity, finding things that are confusing or missing just like a reader would. But since they’re also literary doctors, they’ll help you fix it, saving you from the embarrassing backlash of reader criticism and scorn. Besides, two heads are better than one. Right?