The Editor's POV

Re: editors and editing

2012-02-24T10:56:00.000-08:00

At the New York Review of Books, a commentator muses on the experience of reading books, and asks, "What is it that these literary men and women are afraid of losing should the paper novel really go into decline?"

The article referenced above managed to elicit many thoughtful comments. Among them, one person wrote, "It seems that most authors express their gratitude to their editors and publishers and the wise authors will want to continue the practice. But how common is wisdom?"'

Editors who work with self-publishing writers might want to keep up with what those writers are dealing with out there. This roundup on Jane Friedman's blog is a good source—it may also give editors some sympathy for the chaos in which self-publishers are maneuvering.

Editors as well as writers may therefore want to keep an eye on the just-announced Alliance of Independent Authors, a nonprofit membership organization intending to represent the interests of self-published authors.

Finally, Jill Santopolo, editor at Penguin, shares several rounds of editing on the prologue and first chapter of a debut novel by author Mary Lindsey. "Mary is a champion reviser," Jill says. (A previous roundup on this blog offers a collection of online examples of developmental critiques.)

Happy Friday, editors!

Editors Roundtable: Getting started in freelance developmental editing

2012-02-14T08:30:00.000-08:00

Our monthly Editors Roundtable aims to encourage conversation among freelance developmental editors of fiction and creative nonfiction. Please join us—we'd love to hear from you in the comments section! And if you have questions you’d like to see editors answer in future roundtables, please email info@authoreditorclinic.com.

Q: How did you begin freelance developmental editing?

Julie Van Pelt

Almost twenty years ago, I was broke and bored, working admin at a local university. A friend, now colleague, mentored me as a proofreader—a classic one-on-one craft apprenticeship. I was so lucky. And then I made the leap to copyediting, a first client became a reference to get a second client, and so on. After ten years of copyediting, I needed some variety. And I took Amy Einsohn's dictum to heart: copyediting for publishers isn’t a dead end, it’s a cul-de-sac. Getting education in developmental work gave me the confidence to move out of that cul-de-sac and to work directly with authors, which I now do—mostly with academics—along with the copyediting (which I confess is relaxing—all rules, and logic, and category matching).

Karalynn Ott

I was a freelance feature-story journalist for several years, and was burning out. When I moved to Seattle, I decided I wanted to learn how to edit books and also meet peers living locally, so I took the University of Washington Editing Certificate program. There I took Barbara Sjoholm’s developmental editing class, and then took a few of her first Author-Editor Clinic classes. I loved it, and the rest is history.

Diane Mettler

I started as a writer. In my writer’s group, which started up in 1988 and still meets, we would work on each other’s stories, trying to develop character and plot. In the late ’90s I started teaching screenwriting, and a few students asked if I would work on their stories. It evolved from there.

Nancy Wick

I worked in journalism for many years, as both a writer and an editor for newspapers and magazines, but I have always loved reading books—both fiction and nonfiction. About seven years ago I was thinking about how I’d like to get into book editing, and I saw some publicity for the Author-Editor Clinic. I applied to be part of it and was accepted. In the clinic we read book manuscripts and commented on them, both in writing and during a meeting with the author. The editors also discussed things among themselves and learned from each other. I found the editing to be hard work, but I absolutely loved it. I attended three sessions of the clinic before striking out on my own.

Marta Tanrikulu

As a kid, I used to point out the typos in the newspaper to my dad, who was a journalist for the paper. So copyediting was something I gravitated to. My developmental editing skills started in high school and college, primarily in literature courses that demanded critical discussions and essays, complemented by participation one year in a forensics club as a debater. As a graduate student in the sciences, I built complementary skills in critical thinking. Peer review is an integral part of the science professions, and I also participated in Toastmasters, which encourages rapid feedback on speeches. I wouldn't be as strong a developmental editor as I am now if I hadn't also had to write and rewrite my own scientific manuscripts until they were deemed of publishable quality by peer-reviewed journals.

I got into editing after looking for a more portable career than highly specialized researcher. Beginning as a technical editor, which required both developmental editing and copyediting, I eventually decided I'd like to work on a broader range of projects, including fiction, so I started my own business. I didn't want to start editing fiction by copyediting at a publishing house and working my way up again, so I looked for mentors who could help me acquire the nuances of developmental editing of fiction. The Author-Editor Clinic's classes and clinics were central to that. I also took classes on various aspects of writing fiction, which by then were starting to become more readily available online.

Jennifer Hager

In the early ’80s I worked as a transcriptionist (paid to produce accurate, word-for-word copy) in a New York legal office that specialized in religious liberty issues. Press releases, magazine articles, and educational pieces all came through my headphones—their messages too often obscured by “legalese” (which may qualify as a dead language). How I wanted to simplify the language and comb out extra words and phrases! In transcribing a case argument I’d realize that the information release was all wrong. Transcribing an article, I’d ache to restructure it in order to let emotional persuasion have the last word. After months of frustration, I asked for permission (on pieces for public consumption) to suggest changes for the readers’ sake. That was the beginning for me.

Q: How has your work as a freelance developmental editor changed over the past five years?

Karalynn

I think I’m much more efficient than I was five years ago, because I feel more confident, and I’ve developed much better working methods too. I’ve also been surprised about the kind of manuscripts I’ve worked on. As a former journalist, I thought I’d want to focus on nonfiction manuscripts, but I’ve worked on many more science/speculative fiction and fantasy novels than I expected—and I like them quite a bit!

Marta

My first business clients asked for technical editing services; in the past few years, I've increasingly taken on individual authors, mostly writers of fiction, as clients.

Diane

I used to work almost solely with screenplays, but that’s evolved and now I edit as many novels and scripts.

With the Internet, communication and editing online have gotten to the point that I now work with clients I might not ever meet. (Although I’d much rather meet them face to face!)

But as far as editing process—that’s pretty much stayed the same. Just working through the manuscript, helping writers create those page-turning stories.

Jennifer

Last spring I participated in my first “Manuscript Clinic” with Barbara Sjoholm, in which she mentored me through a developmental edit of an unpublished memoir that resulted in a 25-page editorial letter. At every step, it was valuable in widening my perspectives, examining my process, and delivering more effective results. Going over a couple points of my feedback to the author, Barbara said, “These sound a bit prescriptive to me…” That word prescriptive nailed an ego-driven posture that I haven’t liked but couldn’t identify. That single comment became a pivot point for me, and I believe that the editorial letter I produced under Barbara’s tutelage was my best piece of work yet.

Nancy

When I first began editing, I thought I would like working with beginning writers, helping them to master a new skill and create a manuscript they could be proud of. But over time I’ve realized that I am much more effective working with people who know how to write but are having specific difficulties with their manuscript. I can help them to pinpoint what’s wrong and give them some ideas about how to fix it. This doesn’t mean I don’t work with unpublished writers. I do, more often than not, but I am at my best working with someone who already knows the basics of writing. Very often my clients are professionals in disciplines that require writing—such as social work or teaching—but who are working on something new for them, such as fiction or book-length nonfiction.

Q: What is one thing that you wish you’d known when you began working as a developmental editor?

Karalynn

It would have been helpful for me to brush up on some of the elements of a fiction manuscript—point of view, tone, voice, story arc, etc. These are things that, as a magazine writer, were elements in my own writing, but I hadn’t thought much about them in depth for years (certainly not in the longer book format). I had to reacquaint myself with many of these so I could better analyze them.

Jennifer

I started with a handicap: a fear of clear, explicit communication with others. It was hard for me to ask direct questions, make specific requests, and receive honest feedback. Lacking these skills (critical for building good ongoing relationships with our clients), I trusted my untested intuitions and assumptions rather than creating real alignment with my clients. Repeat business was rare. But these days I’m proactive about these things.

Diane

I wish I’d realized earlier that writers need as much encouragement as they need critique. It’s easy to point out the problem spots, and that’s essentially what a writer is paying you to do. But whether you’re a new or an accomplished writer, it’s sometimes hard to tell where things are really working, and you don’t want to edit out what’s working.

I feel so strongly about pointing out the areas of strength that I started a writing class that focuses solely on positive reinforcement. I’m amazed how much more quickly work improves when writers feel free to write without the fear of being beaten up, and are allowed to see where they have skills.

Julie

That it was so hard! Actually, I knew that was true, at least for me. I’m good at it, but it’s taxing for me, and so I’ve learned to balance the creativity that developmental work demands—and that’s so enjoyable—with the mental ease I find in other kinds of editing. Knowing my strengths and weaknesses is a good thing, and the balance is constantly evolving.

Nancy

Ironically, the thing that has come hardest to me is not the editing itself, but the interaction with potential clients who come to me seeking information. When I first started, I think I assumed too much knowledge on the part of these people, and didn’t spend enough time discussing with them what they were really looking for. So, starting out, I wish I had known the right questions to ask a potential client and how best to present myself and what I have to offer. I’ve learned that taking time up front to get everything clear pays off in the end.

Re: editors and editing

2012-02-10T08:15:00.000-08:00

Those who write about publishing have been making editors happy lately.

Jane Friedman reminds writers:
“An editor is someone with professional training whose only responsibility is to ensure you produce the best book possible.”

Melissa Foster and Amy Edelman at IndieReader.com remind self-publishers:
“The main complaint about the indie book category is the lack of editing. … Let us simply say here that every writer benefits from a good editor.”

Publisher Jamie Raab (Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group) reminds everyone:
“You can't underestimate the importance of editing.”

Jeff Norton, on The Literary Platform, says this:
“I believe the most important role that publishers perform is the one they are strangely reluctant to celebrate: the editor and the process of editing an author’s manuscript into a readable book.”

Jeff Norton goes on to urge the publishing industry to celebrate editors.

Here’s the food for thought:

“Could we develop our editors into brands? It would be a lot more relevant than imprints (granted, some eponymous imprints are one in [sic] the same), which have limited meaning to consumers, but editors are real people, with real taste acting as both curator and collaborator. Editing is a craft, taught through old fashioned, but ever-relevant, on-the-job apprenticeship and should treated as such.” [Read the article.]

Happy Friday, editors!

Why write an editorial letter?

2012-02-08T08:15:00.000-08:00

An Editor’s Guide to Working with Authors, by Barbara Sjoholm, is available through the Clinic website or in person and online from several Seattle bookstores. In 2012, we’re happy to announce the eBook edition for the Kindle and the Nook. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter Five, “Why Write an Editorial Letter.”

An editorial helps me organize my thoughts about structural issues in a long manuscript. Rather than scribble down remarks and opinions piecemeal, on the paper or digital pages of the novel or memoir, I try to gather up the threads of my main points, using examples, lists, and quotes to buttress my arguments. Writing a letter, like writing any logical essay, offers me practice in saying precisely what I mean. I have to think as I write, and that forces me to articulate my thoughts so that, if and when I have other communication with the author, I’ve already summarized for myself what the issues are and can meet the author’s questions and concerns with confidence that I’ve thought the problems through and have a plan.

February 8 deadline for manuscripts for the spring editorial session

2012-01-31T17:52:00.000-08:00

We'd like to remind writers interested in our spring editorial session that the deadline for submitting your manuscript for reasonably priced editing is February 8. For more details as well as praise from past authors, see our website. This year we’ll be offering only one session, so if you’ve ever thought about working with an editor from the Clinic, now is a great time to take advantage of a service many writers have raved about.

Re: editors and editing

2012-01-27T08:14:00.000-08:00

Writer Kenda Turner explores “hidden elements” in story. The ability to recognize and discuss embedded themes in a novel or memoir is an important part of an editor’s toolkit.
Turner also mentions embedding the ending in the beginning of a story. Ready for some research? “The Best 100 Opening Lines from Books” (via @EditorAM).
Editors taking the Author-Editor Clinic’s class on Character and POV right now might be interested in the vast collection of links to articles about character at Elizabeth S. Craig’s Writer’s Knowledge Base.
I’m curious too about checklists for editing, usually offered as gifts to writers who are self-editing. For instance, here’s one by guest blogger Alexandra Sokoloff at The Blood-Red Pencil, and here’s one by writer and editor Victoria Mixon. How might these types of checklists be useful to developmental editors?

What does it take to become a good developmental editor?

2012-01-25T10:34:00.000-08:00

Learning to analyze the issues in a long manuscript is only part of what it takes to become a good developmental editor. The more challenging task for many editors is to discover how best to communicate observations and suggestions in ways that encourage authors to make changes but also respect the author’s own wishes and visions for the manuscript. Particularly for editors coming from a copyediting background, who know a vast number of rules and are accustomed to wielding a red pencil with The Chicago Manual of Style as final arbiter, it can be unsettling (as well as liberating) to realize that editing fiction and creative nonfiction sometimes comes down to a matter of taste and intuition.

In the word “copyediting,” the object is embedded in the verb: you don’t edit an author, you edit copy. But in editing fiction and creative nonfiction, what you edit is not copy. It’s the heart and soul and imagination of a real person. A writer.

Re: editors and editing

2012-01-20T08:44:00.000-08:00

An author celebrates critiques from beta readers—and in the comments, writers and beta readers alike share their experiences. (via @agatamontoya)

A recent interview with developmental editor Alan Rinzler: “I feel it’s an honour and a privilege to be part of a writer’s creative process. And it’s so much fun.” (via @elizabethscraig)

A collection of essays on e-publishing, from Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, is available as a free e-book. (via @sterlingediting)

Also, the Author Name Pronunciation Guide from TeachingBooks.net is really, really cool. Try it.

Editors Roundtable: Introducing Jennifer Hager and Amy Smith Bell

2012-01-19T08:15:00.000-08:00

I met both Jennifer and Amy originally through the Northwest Independent Editors Guild, before they began participating in Author-Editor Clinic classes. Amy first gave me my first marketing tips ever—at a Guild meeting in 2005, before I even got my first business license. I still handwrite and hand-address holiday cards to my clients every year because of what Amy said. (She may not remember this.) Jenn I met only last year, but is one of those people you trust instantly. I hope you’ll keep reading to see for yourself why I love learning from my fellow editors! —Kyra Freestar

Jennifer Hager

On LinkedIn

How long have you been doing developmental editing for authors?

About four years (though not full time)

What is your favorite thing about developmental editing?

There are two. First, it thrills me to envision possibilities within and around a story: the wider world or context, the history, interweaving themes, the complexities of characters and relationships. Second, it’s an amazing privilege to work with an author on this level. When I was pregnant with my last child—a high-risk baby—my doctor performed a complete ultrasound exam in the last trimester, looking at all her organs, heart valves, everything. Doing a developmental edit is like performing that ultrasound exam.

What are your favorite genres to edit?

Memoir, historical fiction, serious nonfiction.

What was your favorite book when you were 13 years old?

My siblings and I were steeped in Edward Eager’s Half Magic and classics like Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book and Stevenson’s Treasure Island. As a dog lover and horse girl, I’d read everything by Albert Payson Terhune (Lad, a Dog) and Walter Farley (Black Stallion). But I was most intrigued by Hidden Treasure of Glaston by Eleanor Jewett, which brought me into the world of the 12th century in England.

What’s one thing you hope your editing clients say about you?

“Jenn is a great ally,” and “This collaboration is improving my writing.”

What’s one thing about yourself that you think would surprise your editing clients?

I spent 10 years in Hong Kong, raising a family and exploring every nook and cranny in Asia that I could get to.

Coffee, tea, or chocolate?

Dark chocolate, preferably a large bar that I can squirrel away somewhere and nibble on when needed—could last me a whole month.

Amy Smith Bell

ASB Editorial Consulting and Services

How long have you been doing developmental editing for authors?
I’ve been an independent editor since 1998 (I worked in-house for a variety of trade and academic book publishers before that). When I first struck out on my own, I did a lot of copyediting and proofreading, but for the past five years I’ve focused on developmental editing.

What is your favorite thing about developmental editing?
I find the whole process at once challenging and supremely satisfying. At the outset I may have a feeling of chaos and confusion about a project. But as I methodically work my way through a manuscript and carefully consider the bigger-picture issues (structure, voice, point of view, theme, characterization, pacing, chronology, setting, and so on), I always find my way clear in how to help the author strengthen the work. It’s very gratifying to help a writer achieve his or her goals.

What are your favorite genres to edit?
Adult fiction, juvenile/young adult fiction, memoir, adventure narrative.

What was your favorite book when you were 13 years old?
Hands down, it was A Wrinkle in Time. I also loved the Anne of Green Gables series as well as anything by S.E. Hinton (The Outsiders, That Was Then This Is Now, Rumblefish, etc.). Other teary faves at the tender age of 13 were Bridge to Terabithia and Where the Red Fern Grows.

What’s one thing you hope your editing clients say about you?
I hope my clients say my work is thoughtful, insightful, careful, supportive, and above all, useful in helping them meet their goals.

What’s one thing about yourself that you think would surprise your editing clients?
I am a closet triathlete and will run my third half-marathon in January 2012.

Coffee, tea, or chocolate?
Coffee and chocolate (sip, bite, repeat).

[You can read introductions to six more Roundtable editors here, here, and here. But next month, I’m going to ask them tougher questions. —kf]

Editors Roundtable: Introducing Karalynn Ott and Diane Mettler

2012-01-17T08:15:00.000-08:00

Karalynn is one of the reasons the Author-Editor Clinic exists: she was one of a small group of editors who convinced Barbara Sjoholm to think seriously about training for early-career developmental editors who, as freelancers, don’t have peer conversations and in-house supervison to support their learning. Karalynn now teaches the online class The Business of Freelance Developmental Editing for the Clinic several times a year. Diane is, of all the editors on the Roundtable, the one I’ve met most recently—again through an online class—yet she’s been offering professional developmental editing services for authors longer than any of us. She lives in the Seattle area, so I’m looking forward to meeting her in person someday soon. —Kyra Freestar

Karalynn Ott

On LinkedIn; also listed on the Northwest Independent Editors Guild's member list, and at the Author-Editor Clinic

How long have you been doing developmental editing for authors?

Eight years. Prior to that I was a journalist, mainly writing feature-length stories.

What is your favorite thing about developmental editing?

That I get to spend a nice long amount of time with a manuscript, and I get to think deeply about it. Also, that I’m a working partner with my author-clients.

What are your favorite genres to edit?

I love character-driven fiction and personal adventure stories. And anything with a little clever, offbeat humor is fun to work with too.

What was your favorite book when you were 13 years old?

We don’t really have to choose just one, do we?

Nonfiction: Horsemanship for Beginners (a well-written and well-used riding instruction book, with lots of useful/helpful pictures—I still have it on my shelf).

Fiction: The Call of the Wild, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (I was deep into animals and outdoor adventures even then), Johnny Tremain.

What’s one thing you hope your editing clients say about you?

That they are happy with my work and our working relationship; that I helped them not only better their project, but become a better writer, too.

What’s one thing about yourself that you think would surprise your editing clients?

That one of my first career aspirations was to be a clothing designer. But I was always better at working with words than handling a sewing machine.

Coffee, tea, or chocolate?
Espresso and chocolate ;)

Diane Mettler

Spilled Ink Marketing, and on Facebook

How long have you been doing developmental editing for authors?

I realized I had been doing developmental editing with my writers group since we got together in 1988. But I didn’t begin doing it as a professional service outside the the group until around 1997 when I began teaching.

What is your favorite thing about developmental editing?

I love the “light bulb” … when you point out a potential issue or problem. You don’t tell authors how to correct it, but point them in the right direction. It’s hugely satisfying to see the lightbulb go off and the writer see the character or plot or dialogue in a whole new way.

I also like reading the second draft and seeing vast improvement!

What are your favorite genres to edit?

The books or scripts I’ve worked on have been primarily drama or sci-fi. But I love a good comedy. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many writers writing comedy.

What was your favorite book when you were 13 years old?

Watership Down.

What’s one thing you hope your editing clients say about you?

That not only was their book/script improved with the feedback, but they will approach their next project with new insight.

What’s one thing about yourself that you think would surprise your editing clients?

I had a movie air on Hallmark in 2010, which you can catch around Halloween time —Growing the Big One. It was inspired by my brother’s giant pumpkin competitions.

Coffee, tea, or chocolate?

Chocolate.

[Note: Roundtable editors Nancy Wick, Julie Van Pelt, Marta Tanrikulu, and Beth Stokes were introduced last week. Come back Thursday morning for introductions to the final two editors on our panel.]

Re: editors and editing

2012-01-13T09:28:00.000-08:00

The theme this week is interviews. From the Internet:

Interviews with freelance copyeditors at the Copyediting blog.
Profiles of editors in varied roles, via editing students at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (thanks to @suebb). Their conclusion is in the title: "Editing skills prove valuable in all kinds of roles."
Interview with a freelance manuscript editor on indie author J.A. Konrath's site.
Resources on finding an editor or proofreader, for writers and publishers around the world. Compiled by @LouiseHarnby.

Happy Friday, editors!

Editors Roundtable: Introducing Marta Tanrikulu and Beth Stokes

2012-01-12T08:15:00.000-08:00

Marta and Beth live on opposite coasts, in the Bay Area and Boston. I met both online, several years ago now, during Author-Editor Clinic online classes. (I actually got to meet Marta in person last September when she came to Seattle for the Red Pencil in the Woods conference put on by the Northwest Independent Editors Guild.) Both challenge my thinking and my editing in the best way, and have become colleagues I count on for support and feedback when I need it. —Kyra Freestar

Marta Tanrikulu

TanMar Editorial

How long have you been doing developmental editing for authors?

Three years as independent editor; earlier I did developmental editing for technical authors in a corporate environment.

What is your favorite thing about developmental editing?

Analyzing how a story is coming across and why.

What are your favorite genres to edit?

Speculative fiction, mystery/thriller/suspense, historical fiction. I was drawn to all of these from a young age, and while I read almost any genre with interest, these are the ones I still tend to gravitate to first.

What was your favorite book when you were 13 years old?

That was my phase of primarily reading science fiction and fantasy, so my favorite must have been Andre Norton’s The Zero Stone. I spent the last few weeks when I was 13 absorbed in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but was not quite done reading it when I turned 14. (My memory isn't really this good; I confess to having a note tucked away with the date I finished the trilogy, appendices and all.)

What’s one thing you hope your editing clients say about you?

Worth the investment.

What’s one thing about yourself that you think would surprise your editing clients?

Perhaps my interest in other cultures.

Coffee, tea, or chocolate?

Chocolate.

Beth Stokes

Hook, Arc, and Twist Editing

How long have you been doing developmental editing for authors?

Not long—about two years, and as my schedule allows. Even though my academic background is in literature and journalism, I spent a long time writing for business, shaping large systems of technical information into coherent narratives. Eventually my skills grappling with large systems converged with my original loves of literature, reading, and writing.

What is your favorite thing about developmental editing?

I love foremost that anything can happen in a book. And then I get my personal kicks by bringing analysis and organization to that book’s unique systems of meaning. I think of myself as an ethnographer who’s more addicted to reading than travel.

What are your favorite genres to edit?

Literary fiction because I love to read it, along with speculative fiction, sci-fi, historical fiction, and genre fiction. Editing memoir is pleasantly challenging because there’s more attention to the author-editor relationship. I’m also drawn to creative nonfiction, but that doesn’t come across my desk frequently.

What was your favorite book when you were 13 years old?

My 13-year-old self was living in France and had very limited access to English-language books. I vividly remember devouring The Kent Family Chronicles by John Jakes, which my parents must have picked up at a yard sale from a departing American.

What’s one thing you hope your editing clients say about you?

“Beth saw straight through to the essentials of my story. Thoughtful and plain-spoken, she made it easy to see where to polish.”

What’s one thing about yourself that you think would surprise your editing clients?

I’m into cars, and have had some unusual vehicles for a mild-mannered editor, including a homologated/GTO rally car, a 40-year-old Saab, a first-generation Insight, and a motorcycle. All at once.

Coffee, tea, or chocolate?

Chocolate: morning, noon, and night.

[Note: Roundtable editors Nancy Wick and Julie Van Pelt were introduced on Tuesday. Come back next week for introductions to four more editors on our panel: here and here.]

Editors Roundtable: Introducing Nancy Wick and Julie Van Pelt

2012-01-10T08:15:00.000-08:00

I met Julie Van Pelt when she gave a guest lecture at a class I was taking for the University of Washington Certificate Program in Editing. She probably can’t remember. I met Nancy Wick through the Author-Editor Clinic in 2006, when she was the experienced editor in the room and I was the newbie. Since then I’ve been privileged to become friends with both editors … and I always listen carefully to every word they say. (Really, I do.) —Kyra Freestar

Nancy Wick

Enlightened Edits

How long have you been doing developmental editing for authors?

I think about six years. I’ve done journalistic editing since the 1970s.

What is your favorite thing about developmental editing?

It’s simple. I love to read. Every time I pick up a new book, there’s that rush of anticipation—expecting pleasure, expecting to learn something. When I get a manuscript of an as yet unpublished book, I have that same rush of anticipation, with the added pleasure of knowing that I get to interact with the author. Since I am a writer as well as an editor, I know how easy it is to get lost in one’s own work and not be able to find a way out, and how bad it can feel when you reach that point. When I’m working on a manuscript rather than just reading for pleasure, I have the opportunity to use my analytical mind to figure out what’s working and what’s not. When I can help a writer say clearly what he or she wants desperately to say, that’s very satisfying to me.

What are your favorite genres to edit?

This is a hard question for me to answer because I have very eclectic tastes. In fiction I like character-driven novels of all kinds—books that focus on why people do the things they do. It doesn’t matter to me whether those novels are mysteries or literary fiction or historical romance, as long as they present interesting characters whose motives I get to ponder. Given that, it’s not surprising that in nonfiction I like psychology/self-help books, spirituality books, and memoirs. However, I should say that I’ve worked on books that don’t fit into any of these categories.

What was your favorite book when you were 13 years old?

At 13 I was trying hard to read things that were above my maturity level. I remember reading For Whom the Bell Tolls, Exodus, Gone with the Wind. I also remember finding a copy of Peyton Place in a brown paper sack in a drawer at home. It probably belonged to my older sister. I sneaked it out and read it and was disgusted. My good taste was developing already!

What’s one thing you hope your editing clients say about you?

That I took their writing seriously on its own terms and that my suggestions helped them improve the manuscript.

What’s one thing about yourself that you think would surprise your editing clients?

That if I’d had my druthers, I would have become an actress. My bachelor’s degree is in speech and drama. Unfortunately, I’m way too self-conscious for that kind of career, but I still love the theater and attend often.

Coffee, tea, or chocolate?

None of the above. I don’t like the taste of coffee and couldn’t drink it on a bet. I will drink tea politely if someone gives it to me. As for chocolate, well, I was the kid who ordered the vanilla ice cream cone. My drink of choice: water … and wine, of course, but not when I’m working!

Julie Van Pelt

www.julievanpelt.com, and on LinkedIn

How long have you been doing developmental editing for authors?

I’ve been an editor since 1995, doing developmental work with authors since 2006.

What is your favorite thing about developmental editing?

That moment when the author sees what the shape of her/his book will really be, often after several drafts. Inspiring.

What are your favorite genres to edit?

Travel lit and history—put ’em together and I’m blissed out.

What was your favorite book when you were 13 years old?

Thirteen, eighth grade, hmmm. Must have been Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy? Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders series? I was very into fantasy/sci fi, but in eighth grade I don’t think I’d yet found James Tiptree or Samuel Delany. Oh! I know, Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Green Sky trilogy. How odd, though—I haven’t read sci fi in years!

What’s one thing you hope your editing clients say about you?

That I listened to them and edited their work from the inside out, helping them make their work more itself.

What’s one thing about yourself that you think would surprise your editing clients?

I don’t like word games! Crosswords, anagrams, jumbles, Scrabble, blah blah blah. They’re all a busman’s holiday if you ask me. Ditto grammar blogs. My favorite word game is simply to be immersed in a well-written book, seeing how the author puts things together. Magic.

Coffee, tea, or chocolate?

I have to choose?

[And come back Thursday morning for introductions to editors Marta Tanrikulu and Beth Stokes.]

An Editors Roundtable

2012-01-09T08:19:00.000-08:00

My editing and freelance career has grown tremendously over the years that I’ve participated in Author-Editor Clinic classes, clinics, and other discussions. I credit this not just to the years of reading, writing, and editing, but also and especially to the opportunities to talk with other editors. Listening to the many editors I’ve met, both online and offline, I’ve learned to recognize some of my own editorial patterns, discover what my voice looks like in black and white, and think about how to convey my own personality as an editor. I steer my way as a developmental editor by the light of the emotional, analytic, and communication skills demonstrated by my colleagues.

This blog began in the fall of 2010 as a way to encourage dialogue among different generations of editors in the Clinic program, and to extend the conversation to the greater online community of editors, specifically freelance developmental editors of fiction and creative nonfiction.

This year, we’ve got a new idea to try out: an Editors Roundtable.

Every month for as long as we can keep it up—and at least for the first half of 2012—we’ll present several editors’ perspectives on freelance developmental editing. This month’s topic is “Favorite Things”—as an introduction to the eight participating editors. So keep an eye on the blog this week and next for introductions to editors Nancy Wick, Julie Van Pelt, Marta Tanrikulu, Beth Stokes, Karalynn Ott, Dianne Mettler, Jennifer Hager, and Amy Smith Bell. (I’m doing it in reverse alpha order, because we do it the other way so often, you know.)

I hope the Roundtables will spark conversation in your head, among your friends and colleagues, and online (comments are open; you can also contact us on Twitter or email info@authoreditorclinic.com). Happy editing.

—Kyra Freestar

Re: editors and editing

2012-01-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday! And a few links for editors:

Elizabeth Craig has recently been tweeting about characterization for writers, which seems in good time for the Author-Editor Clinic’s upcoming class on character and point of view, so here's a sampling (go to @elizabethscraig on Twitter to see all of the links):

How to Make a Boring Character Interesting: http://bit.ly/zF8R8O #writetip
The Most Important Character Archetype: http://bit.ly/uYim4P @write_practice #writetip
Defining Character Archetypes: http://bit.ly/vg6okB @writersdigest #writetip
The "Why" of Character Worksheets: http://bit.ly/rBLdvY @TheresaStevens #writing

Also, January is National Mentoring Month. It's a good time of year to acknowledge our mentors and consider how we can contribute to others. I’ve realized there are editors out there who know I consider them my mentors—

—and those I watch and learn from and consider role models, or mentors from afar, including:

Kelly Eskridge
Victoria Mixon
Julie Van Pelt — and you'll hear from Julie directly next week, on The Editor’s POV!

Thank you all!

—Kyra Freestar

First, third, and the person in between—a class on POV and Character

2012-01-05T08:51:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love about teaching is that it allows me to revisit and explore broader issues than those I encounter in everyday editing work. For instance, many of the fiction writers I work with use first person or single or multiple third person in their novels. Of course there are many variations on these viewpoints, as well as the lesser-used second person, and I’ve been thinking about them almost nonstop for a week as I read and revise lectures and make up assignments for the upcoming four-week online class, Focus on Character and POV.

Looking for examples of different POVs, in memory, on my bookstores, and on Wikipedia (who knew there was an entry on second-person narrative with a long, fascinating list of stories and novels employing “you” ?) has reminded me of dozens of novels I adore and those I always meant to read. Lucky for me, not only will I get a chance to revisit favorite novels and characters, but editors taking the class will also bring up examples to discuss.

We’re anticipating a lively session, so if fiction interests you, please join us! The class begins next Wednesday, January 11.

For more information, including a syllabus, or for questions, please email Kyra Freestar at info@authoreditorclinic.com

—Barbara Sjoholm

Happy New Year, editors!

2011-12-30T10:27:00.000-08:00

On the last workday of the year (for most of us), here's a few links to represent the wonderful world of the Internet in 2011.

Jane Friedman’s 12 Must-Read Articles from 2011: A roundup of the year’s deep thinking on reading, writing, and publishing. Information, expertise, journalism, web, books, and more.

Zen Habits’ Habit Change Cheatsheet: 29 tips for successfully incorporating a new habit into your life. The first two tips: Do just one habit at a time. Start small. (At least three editors on Twitter have resolved to take walks outside in 2012. Every day.)

News of a movement to occupy sidewalks (or street corners) with microlibraries. Poets & Writers Magazine has an article and video. GeekMom’s blog has the best roundup of links I’ve seen. Little Free Library has a national vision, and more photos.

And gratitude, for the editors we've come to know online. The Author-Editor Clinic’s Twitter persona, @ae_clinic, now follows 237 editors around the world. Literally around the world: from Seattle to Dubai, via Dublin. Some have taken classes with us. Many curate their own lists of “editing” connections—and so the community expands. Editors associations of all sorts, from the EFA to the EAC, also meet online these days as well as offline; copyeditor Katharine O’Moore-Klopf maintains a comprehensive list of editors associations as a gift to other editors, who don’t have to do the research all over again. So on this last Friday of 2011, we'd like to express our deep appreciation for the all the editors we've met, worked with, and learned from this year. Thank you, and see you online in 2012.

Happy New Year!

Re: editors and editing

2011-12-23T09:31:00.001-08:00

I can’t not reference a blog post titled “On Editors & Editing.” The subtitle is “A Call to Arms for Indie Authors,” so this is a letter to authors, not editors. But it documents a transition point I’ve been suspecting occurs again and again, one author at a time. From writer Jenny Milchman:

“I realized that if I didn’t have an editor of this caliber telling me my book needed more work, then I wouldn’t be doing it. It’s too hard. The closer a book comes to good, the harder it is to go back and pick it apart. … I know I would’ve called my book satisfactory at draft 19. Or 10.” (blog is by @jennymilchman, post forwarded by @Pennhand)

And for a visual look at editing, a slideshow from The New York Times Magazine: “How to Assemble a ‘Dragon’.” From the captions:

“Editing is all about compressing time so it gives you the illusion of continuity, even as we take out the ‘boring’ bits.”
“Even though [the flashback] takes the same amount of screen time,” Wall said, “it actually seems quicker, because you’re staying in that recounting of the event.”

Happy Friday!

Adventures in E- Publishing: An Editor’s Guide goes digital

2011-12-19T16:03:00.000-08:00

An Editor’s Guide to Working with Authors is now available for sale on Kindle through Amazon and on the Nook through Barnes & Noble.

I wasn’t an early adopter of e-readers, but last summer when the Nook Simple Touch came out, I decided to buy one. I didn’t really want to shift away from hefting a nicely designed volume in my hands as I read, caressing the paper and admiring the typeface. Still, I knew that as a writer, an editor, and a teacher, it was important for me to keep up with the times.

I’d also become more aware of the possibilities of e-books in terms of self-publishing. My foray into publishing An Editor’s Guide to Working with Authors on the Espresso Book Machine had left me with a keen sense of the distribution problems most self-publishers face. The book was available with a click on PayPal on the Author-Editor Clinic website, but buyers couldn’t search for it among editing titles in any online bookstore. A handful of excellent Seattle bookstores made space for the book on their shelves and sold numerous copies (thanks, editors!), but I knew I wanted to reach more readers.

I decided to have the text files and cover converted from the published book rather than to begin fresh with the Word files. I also decided to work with a local freelancer as arranged by Third Place Press, which did the EBM version. Instead of going through a site such as Smashwords or FastPencil, which does everything from designing and converting files to setting up royalty payments via vendors such Amazon and Barnes & Noble, I decided to become a vendor myself and deal directly with the e-bookstores.

Despite the fact that the e-book conversion process went on two months longer than estimated, I was pleased with the result. I also think I may have picked up more about the process than I would have otherwise, because the designers were clearly learning on my project. For one thing, I now know that converting tables is a problem, particularly for a Kindle. (There are now no tables in the e-version of An Editor’s Guide. They have been changed to lists.)

When I started the project, back in late summer, I was vaguely aware that there would need to be one platform for Kindle (called Mobi) and another for the Nook and other devices on the market (ePub). But it’s more complex than that. For, as we know, there are quite a few devices out there, from the iPad to the smart phone. Each device has its own quirks. In my experience the Kindle format seemed easiest to program, the Nook more challenging. But the biggest takeaway for me was that the e-book designer must own or have ready access to a wide variety of devices and even different versions of the same device. What looks fine on one device may show problems with text formatting on another.

After I finally had the formatted files, I set up vendor accounts. Barnes & Noble has an encouraging, easy interface, and while Amazon’s is more confusing, it’s quite manageable. After I’d filled in my information, I uploaded the books—in a one-click tap that still seems to be called “publishing.”

I’m very pleased to make The Editor’s Guide to Working with Authors available digitally. And I feel more confident now about advising other writers and editors about the process. For my next editing book I might choose to go straight to e-publishing. My suspicion is that it’s only going to get easier.

—Barbara Sjoholm

Re: editors and editing

2011-12-16T13:56:00.000-08:00

’Tis the season in which we can turn anything, even editorial humor, into gift ideas.

· Red pencil necklaces on Etsy.

· More red pencil necklaces on Etsy.

· Typewriter bracelet and much more from The Writer’s Workshoppe.

· From CafePress: “Revise. You know you want to.”

· “But don’t end with a preposition.” (Warning: No self-respecting copyeditor will wear this T-shirt.)

· “How to use an apostrophe” poster from The Oatmeal.

· The xkcd book, volume 0. Also from xkcd “Just shy, not antisocial” T-shirt and “Citation Needed” sticker.

· And T-shirts that will remind one and all of two important things: “During the day, I dress up like an editor,” and “I can haz grammar.”

Re: editors and editing

2011-12-09T08:15:00.000-08:00

An interesting online conversation about fact and fiction:

The Nail Your Novel blog discusses when and why an author might choose to write memoir versus fiction (or a hybrid of the two). —thanks to @dirtywhitecandy
A Writer’s Digest post discusses legal implications of choices of character name and characterization, sparked by a lawsuit against Kathryn Stockett for “unpermitted appropriation” of a real person’s name and image in The Help, and subsequent emotional distress. (Also read the March 16, 2011, comment by onyx, at the bottom of the page.) —thanks to @LynetteBenton
And the Rights for Writers blog discusses legal liability for authors of memoir. —thanks to @elizabethscraig

In a useful post with an outrageous title, an editor writes about editing, with love.

—thanks to @KOKEdit

And The New York Times says some publishers seem to be deciding that “if e-books are about ease and expedience … then print books need to be about physical beauty and the pleasures of owning, not just reading.”

Re: editors and editing

2011-12-02T09:08:00.001-08:00

Links for editors:

Online Universities’ list of best blogs by and for editors
Editing Resources compiled by Copyediting newsletter’s Erin Brenner

Links for editors to pass on to writers:

Notes on Craft distilled from a writer’s 11 years of classes, workshops, and writing conferences (via @sterlingediting)
Lessons on reading aloud from Mary Robinette Kowal, an award-winning writer whose day job is as a puppeteer and voice actor

Happy Friday!

On Editing Young Adult Fiction

2011-11-28T08:15:00.000-08:00

In October, my class Focus on Editing Young Adult Fiction was my first experience teaching an online class. I was hopeful for the kind of discussions classrooms provide, and I wasn’t disappointed: our dialogue found its pace as the weeks progressed. As the class was wrapping up in its fourth week, we looked anew at how editing for middle grade and young adult ages is different from editing novels for adults.

Voice stands out—a quality that takes readers beyond the printed page to the emotional life of the characters in the story world. Creating characters that ring true requires more of authors and editors than just remembering what it was like during our growing up years. While emotions haven’t changed, situations have.

One participating editor noted there’s a tricky balance in aligning themes, story, audience age, and language. Themes should relate to what the audience is experiencing, developmentally and socially.

Another editor shared an article from a recent National Geographic on the benefits to natural selection of the teenage brain’s orientation to “excitement, novelty, risk, the company of peers.” That shed light on the books we were working with, and might be of use in your own work with manuscripts for this age.

—Pamela Greenwood

Re: editors and editing

2011-11-18T08:15:00.000-08:00

Is there a new trend in self-publishing?

When I started posting links of interest to freelance developmental editors to The Editor’s POV in April, my general sense was that editors and editing were rarely, very rarely, mentioned in the prolific online conversation about publishing and self-publishing.

Self-publishers often entirely ignored the topic of editing, or wrote about why editing was unnecessary.
Editors themselves wrote web pages and blog posts that attempted to convince skeptical writers of the value of editing, or lamented writers’ lack of respect for editing, the poor quality of self-published books, and the subsequent devaluation of the editing profession.

I think this environment is starting to change.

On October 28, Jane Friedman, who firmly believes that “you do not need a publisher,” wrote a post on Writer Unboxed that shifts the conversation to focus on the reasons writers do need professional assistance to publish books:

“There are some things you can figure out on your own. There are other things you want to be taught by an experienced professional, to shorten the learning curve. And finally there are those things that you may never be great at, and that you hire help for. Part of a successful career is understanding the difference between these things, based on your aptitude, time, and resources.”

One of Jane Friedman’s key points, I think, is that editors help authors push themselves to higher quality, and that quality matters.

A recent post on the well-known blog Zen Habits puts it this way:

“When you look at peak-performing experts, you’ll often see that they have either coaches, involved mentors, or a pack of growth-oriented friends that help them excel. … Past the ‘competent’ stage of skill acquisition, it gets increasingly harder to both observe what you’re doing and find quick and easy answers as to how to improve. … You need feedback from outsiders to uncover more opportunities for improvement.”

On November 7, Bob Mayer of Who Dares Wins Publishing acknowledged this:

"It’s really, really hard to truly self-publish. You need help. Whether that help comes in the form of one-time contract work or forming a publishing company … is up to you."

Here's his current take:

"The key for a writer is to sort through all the facts, opinions and flat out lies being thrown about, figure out their own situation, decide where they want to be as an author in the future, and the smartly and courageously choose their own path."

When I was at Northwest Bookfest in September, I chatted with a woman who tried to convince me that editing could be seen as marketing, because it made the product better. I still can’t wrap my mind entirely around that idea—but it starts to seem a bit more plausible when you hear a reader talk about the downside of e-publishing:

“for now there are enough products being published traditionally to supply most of us readers with enough decent-quality content to keep us supplied with all the books we can read. So I don’t need to go looking through thousands of Smashwords books for the handful of gems I am sure are there. Will I miss out on some good books? Yes, but I already can’t read all the books I want to read so I can live with that.”

In the same post, from the Reactions to Reading blog, this reader and book reviewer acknowledges outright the value added by editors and other publishing professionals:

"Virtually none of [the self-published books have] even had the treatment that traditional publishing would provide. It is this treatment which transforms a manuscript into a book and it is this treatment that all books, regardless of the way they are born, should go through before they are presented to the reading public. The treatment includes professional editing (objectively helping to shape the prose and flow of the book), proofreading, continuity/conflict checking, permission checking when quotations or song lyrics have been used, cover design, and providing a readable and eye-pleasing page layout. As far as I am concerned without such treatment a manuscript is still a manuscript."

Just hearing someone say this—with the words "professional editing" included—makes me happy.

And for a final taste of what I’m thinking may be a coming-of-age for self-publishing:

an entertaining rant (warning: includes strong language) about what I’m thinking of as a coming-of-age for self-publishing
and an ode to the collaborative process: “A manuscript doesn’t become less the author’s work because of editing, but it may become more of the author’s vision as a result of editing.”

—Kyra Freestar

Engaging with a manuscript, a writer

2011-11-17T08:15:00.000-08:00

The fall online classes at the Author-Editor Clinic are drawing to a close. My own class, the eight-week introduction to developmental editing, has shifted over from working on novels to taking a look at memoirs. Last week we considered chronology and moving around in time. This week the subject is narrative shape and pacing, and one of the things we try to get a handle on is where the story slows and where it speeds up. We’re also thinking about what gets included in a personal memoir. When the stories are close to the author’s heart and there’s an emotional attachment to relating exactly what happened when, how does the editor step in with a red pen, talking about tightening and shaping the narrative? These kinds of questions are issues I never get tired of discussing, because they are at the core of what it means to engage with a manuscript and the person who wrote it.

The class will be repeated this winter and is now open for registration. Dates are January 11 – February 29, 2012.

—Barbara Sjoholm

Re: editors and editing

2011-11-11T14:31:00.000-08:00

Today, a short roundup of editorial humor:

Punctuation bar jokes, from McSweeneys via @TweedEditing
Lesser-known editing and proofreading marks, from @mightyredpen via @RebeccaBlakeney and @EditorMark
“Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket’s while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance” from @OccupyWriters via @Yomutra
And University of Chicago Press managing editor Anita Samen’s position on the serial comma prompts a marriage proposal from @4ndyman (“Friend me on Facebook, and we’ll talk,” she said.)

You can watch Anita Samen, Carol Fisher Saller, Ben Zimmer, and Jason Riggle talk about language and style (and marriage proposals) online, from the November 8 panel “The Chicago Manual: More than a Century of Style.”

Happy weekend!

Re: editors and editing

2011-11-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

One of the best ways to learn is by observing others. And it’s an experience freelance editors often find hard to come by.

That’s one of the reasons the Author-Editor Clinic was founded, after all: to create a space for freelance editors to learn from peers and mentors, as well as by experience, how to improve their developmental editing skills.

For this week, I collected links to online examples of the developmental editor’s craft. Most of these were posted by editors as samples of their work or by agents as education for clients (i.e., writers). They show a range of styles, approaches, personalities, you name it.

Nathan Bransford, writer and former literary agent, has a collection of page and query critiques on his blog. Each includes a page or query letter submitted to the blog, a short analysis, and Nathan’s line edit and notes to the author. There are also comments from readers, whom Nathan advises to “please be exceedingly polite and remember the sandwich rule: positive, constructive polite advice, positive.”
Rachelle Gardner, current agent, includes a list of actual sentences lifted from her editorial letters, in order to give writers an idea of what to expect.
Victoria Mixon, writer, freelance editor, and blogger extraordinaire, offers a sample developmental editing letter on her website, as well as a collection of free sample edits she provided for novel hooks and climaxes.
Kelley Eskridge and Nicola Griffith, writers/editors at Sterling Editing, offer a sample of their developmental editing work (scroll down the page to download the sample). I also like Kelley’s Edit the Editor series, in which she wrote 41 short pieces in 41 days as part of a write-a-thon, then analyzed how and why each piece did (or didn’t) achieve what she had been aiming for.
I searched the Internet for editors who offered sample manuscript critique letters, and found a few more, including from Greenleaf Literary Services, Book Editing Associates, and Novel Publishing Group. (The last has a sample line edit of a YA novel, which might interest those editors taking this month’s online class “Focus on Editing Young Adult Fiction.”)

I know there are more examples out there—so if you know a site with sample developmental edits or manuscript critiques, please let us know! You can email us at info@authoreditorclinic.com or add the URL to the comments section, and I’ll update this post with the additions.

Re: editors and editing

2011-10-28T17:26:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday, all!

Not sticking strictly to topic today. But here's a few things people are talking about online:

¹ I first heard of screenagers, meaning those of an age to grow up reading on screens, at Carol Fisher Saller’s keynote address to the Northwest Independent Editors Guild’s conference in September.

Online Writers Communities Have Room for Editors, Too

2011-10-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

One of the few benefits of short winter days is being able to peek into other people’s well-lit homes in the late afternoon. My inner voyeur thrills in seeing people interact, unconscious of any spectators, surrounded by their art and the detritus of on-going home improvements.

It’s no surprise then that this editor also likes to lurk, albeit less covertly, on a number of writer’s sites, and for the same reasons. I’m curious how writers in their native habitats talk about, share, and revise their work. Joining a few writers’ sites has allowed me to peek at this, and to hone my editing skills, too.

There are many online communities where writers can ask questions and learn about the writing and publishing processes. They have similarities but, as with all communities, each has its own culture. The four I’ve gravitated toward are Absolute Write, Backspace, Writers.net, and Zoetrope.

All have forums where writers interact on various topics. As a freelance editor coming from outside the publishing industry, I’ve found that forums about working with agents, navigating the submission process, and publishing are helpful for uncovering my blind spots. The forums I’ve participated in most frequently, though, have been those dedicated to critique.

There’s flash fiction, right? I think of online critiques as flash editing. Reading a few 1,000- to 5,000-word submissions a week is a good way to understand where writers run into trouble and want help. I also find that the low-commitment model allows me to dabble in genres I otherwise might not. The casual but persistent nature of the forum also demands that I hone my editorial voice when I do respond. It’s easy to criticize someone’s writing, but it’s also easy for writers to click on my posting history to see if I have ever delivered a constructive word or, worse, have an axe to grind.

At least two sites offer ways to build one-on-one relationships between writers and critics. Absolute Write has a forum for writers seeking for beta readers, which is a function that comes close to an editorial role. For some editors this may skirt too close to working for free. Nonetheless, I think it offers an editor a way to shine in a large community of writers, and possibly to generate some word-of-mouth for future work.

Zoetrope works on yet another model altogether. Originally created by Francis Ford Coppola as a place to submit stories to his magazine Zoetrope: All-Story, it quickly turned into an active online community for workshopping in various genres. Its entire site metaphor is unique, and it differs from the other sites in that submissions are posted only for limited times and there are deadlines for reviews. All communication between writer and critic is private, and writers have the ability to rate the critiques they receive. Each month the five top-rated reviewers are acknowledged on each genre’s home page. I think many of the guidelines for participating at Zoetrope contribute to building relationships, and have helped me stretch and refine my editorial skills.

My sense is that writers looking for serious feedback aren’t put off by freelance editors in their midst, even if our long-term goal is paying work. (However shilling in any form won’t be appreciated.) I’d love to hear any lessons learned from editors who’ve managed to transition gracefully from casual feedback (online or in real life) to a professional relationship. Perhaps in the comments?

Meanwhile, to find an online community that fits you, look for a site’s forum main page, where you can see a count of threads and posts per topic area. This gives a good idea of where the focus is for this particular community and whether it meets a threshold of participation in the area you’re interested in. For instance, Absolute Write has 559,373 posts on YA novels, but only 6,191 in comics and graphic novels. If those are your specialty, you may be able to find a more active community (perhaps even by browsing the older posts there for recommendations).

Below I’ve provided more information on each of the sites mentioned here. Happy flashing!

—Beth Stokes

Absolute Write (www.absolutewrite.com)

Created 1999

36,853 members

6,358,130 posts

Absolute Write is unique in that it has forums dedicated to a wide variety of genres: novels, flash fiction, blogs, poetry, cookbooks, comics, query letters, even songwriting. There are also large sections on craft, the publishing process, conferences, and more.

Backspace (www.bksp.org)

Created 2004

1639 members

275,569 posts

Backspace is anchored by its real-life conference, but also attracts writers by inviting best-selling authors, agents, and acquisitions editors to host online Q&A sessions (many lasting up to a week) with its online members.

Writers.net (www.writers.net)

Created 1994

135 members

682,625 posts

Originally conceived of as (and still primarily aimed at being) a database-driven matchmaking service between writers, agents, and editors.

Zoetrope (www.zoetrope.com)

Created 2000

108,439 members

615,355 reviews

Modeled after the Hollywood studio system, Zoetrope has “buildings” you join in order to submit, read, or review work in each genre. The Writing Building includes short stories, novellas, screenplays, short scripts, poetry, and flash fiction.

For each submission of your own, you must first review a certain number of pieces by other members. Feedback is private between creator and critic, shared over internal “zmail.”

Re: editors and editing

2011-10-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

This week's brief collection of amusing, entertaining, and/or horrifying news and ideas from the Internet:

In the spirit of this month's online class on "The Business of Freelance Developmental Editing," consider going online for "100 Must-Read Freelance Intelligence Tips & Tricks" or to download free styleguide icons for use on your editorial website. (Thanks to @KOKEdit.)

Meanwhile, "Angry Books Writer" asks Salon.com advice columnist Cary Tennis, "How do I stop getting so upset?" at friends of friends who ask her to read, evaluate, and edit their manuscripts for free. I like the advice. The comments are up, down, and sideways, and generally entertaining. (Thanks to an anonymous editor from the Northwest Independent Editors Guild.)

Finally, remember a few years ago, when independent writer/publishers were asking each other online, "Should I be worried about piracy?"—that is, readers stealing copies of e-book files and/or giving copies to their friends? The consensus was not to bother worrying: It was gonna happen anyway, and in the end, word of mouth would trump financial losses. Now there's a new horror story: What if someone plagiarizes your story or novel, repackages it under his own name, and is selling it on Amazon and Smashwords? (Thanks to @victoriastrauss.)

On beginnings and endings ...

2011-10-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

I spent the first day of October at Northwest Bookfest. Among many activities that day, I participated on a panel with five other freelance editors from the Northwest Independent Editors Guild.* Our panel spoke to a roomful of writers—most of whom had never before worked with a professional editor—about “How to Find and Work with a (freelance) Editor.”

These were the topics we arranged to cover on the panel:

why writers of books need editors
when different types of editing (e.g., developmental editing, copyediting) might be useful
what freelance editors can and can’t offer
when and how to find and interview potential editors, and
tips for working effectively with a freelance editor

You might say the panel focused on how to begin a relationship with a freelance editor.

I’ve worked with a number of writers who’ve never spoken to a professional editor before. I’m also the first person to talk to the writers who apply to participate in Author-Editor Clinic manuscript sessions and explain what sort of editing the Clinic offers. So beginning an editorial relationship is something I think about a lot, and I was really glad to be part of this panel.

The best takeaway of the day for me, though, was in a question from one of the two writers in the audience who had previously been edited. The question was, How do you end a relationship with an editor?

Time was short by the time this question was asked, and I don’t think the several of us on the panel who attempted to answer the question really got to the heart of it. I’m still not sure exactly what question the writer meant to ask, in fact:

How do you know when it’s time to stop editing?
How do you close out an editorial relationship, when both parties are satisfied with the work?
How do you end an editorial relationship, when either writer or editor feels that the writing/editing and/or the relationship is no longer working?

The upcoming class on The Business of Freelance Developmental Editing discusses setting expectations with clients via contracts and other materials. I’m thinking back to when I took the class, and I think I’ll be reviewing my materials again.

Because I realize now I’ve not spent much time thinking consciously about the ending of the editorial relationship—or communicating anything about it to my clients up front. There are things I know that perhaps would be useful to explain. For example, that editing is cyclical. That I expect at some point it will be a good idea to seek fresh eyes on a manuscript. That I hope my clients will tell me when things aren’t working, even if they’re not sure why. Yes, I want to work with writers who are adult enough to speak up when things aren’t working—but hey, most of us have a hard time with that at times. I can use my experience and awareness to help the relationship run as smoothly as possible.

I’m thinking, too, that anything I can do to contribute to clients’ confidence about navigating the end of an editorial relationship should also help at the beginning.

—Kyra Freestar

*The other editors on the panel were Nancy Wick and Kathy Bradley, both of whom I’ve known for a while through the Author-Editor Clinic (Nancy has written a number of excellent posts for this blog), and Helen Townsend, Heidi M. Thomas, and Jenna Land Free, whom I met through the Editors Guild.

The Business of Freelance Developmental Editing course, October 18 – November 8, 2011

2011-10-04T10:45:00.000-07:00

Just a quick reminder that I’ll be teaching another session of my four-week online course, The Business of Freelance Developmental Editing, October 18 – November 8, 2011.

In past sessions, we’ve been joined by editors considering opening a freelance business, as well as those currently freelancing. Course materials include online lectures, weekly written assignments, and group discussion.

I've taught this class a handful of times over the past couple of years, and we always have lively, interesting, and informative exchanges on all the big and little things that help one create, run, and refresh a successful editing business.

Many of us who attended the Red Pencil in the Woods conference outside Seattle last month were reminded of just how important it is for editors to always be on the lookout for ways to improve our business skills, as well as just share information with other editors. So I hope to see have some of you as course participants later this month!

Best,

Karalynn Ott

For more information about the class and to register, please visit www.authoreditorclinic.com/classes-for-editors.html#business

Travel Writing Class with Barbara Sjoholm Hugo House Oct 8

2011-10-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

There are still some places left in my four-hour workshop on travel writing next Saturday in Seattle. I've done this at Hugo House several times and we always have great fun sharing adventures and creating longer articles and essays from our notes.

Hope to see some of you there!

Barbara Sjoholm

From Travel Blog to Travel Essay

You’ve been keeping journals of your travels or posting to a blog about your trip. Is there more to explore in a longer and deeper narrative about your journey and your encounters with other cultures? Bring your colorful bits and pieces of description and insight to this class, and we will work on quilting them together into essays. We will look at using photographs, research and objects to enhance the narratives, and will pay special attention to methods of revision that bring distant places and people to life.

http://hugohouse.org/class/travel-blog-travel-essay

Red Pencil in the Woods

2011-09-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

I spent Saturday in the company of editors, at a day-long conference presented by the Northwest Independent Editors Guild. This post is a rundown of sessions I attended and thoughts I took away.

Keynote by Carol Fisher Saller

Carol Fisher Saller, author of The Subversive Copyeditor, gave the keynote speech, titled “Navigating the New Publishing Landscape.” The theme was “journey,” which does seem a useful metaphor for a career in freelance editing. What I took away was that editorial skills remain necessary regardless of the way words are published. Lots and lots of words are published these days, and as Carol said, “Quality content will always have to be written by writers and edited by editors.” However, creativity will continue to be necessary for navigating the changing technical and economic landscapes. And a level of comfort with creative thinking and change may be necessary for feeling at home in our freelance careers.

Of interest:

Research from BookStats 2011, showing that the publishing industry is growing. (Search the New York Times online for “BookStats” over the last 12 months for a few summaries.)
Next-generation publisher Namelos, product of creativity, vision, and years of experience in traditional publishing, who mixes and matches publishing with author services in an economic model that may be fair to author, editor, publisher as well as, hopefully, economically successful. (Namelos published Carol’s children’s book Eddie’s War.)

Following the keynote was an exceptional panel on ebooks:

(Almost) Everything Editors Need to Know about E-books

Panelists Judith Dern of Allrecipes.com, Kate Rogers of The Mountaineers Books’ Skipstone imprint, and Bob Mayer of Who Dares Wins Publishing confirmed, for me, the need to look at publishing as a journey. Judith and Kate have both spent several years overseeing ebook production, and in both cases they’ve already been through several successive strategies, first outsourcing ebook file conversion, and later hiring technology consultants to bring ebook production in-house. It sounds like proofreading is the most likely task to be offered to freelancers, and those freelancers ought to be comfortable with operating in a still-changing technological environment.

Bob, who was a best-selling writer before going into ebook (and print) publishing with Who Dares Wins, made it clear that self-published writers who want to succeed need editing—including developmental editing. Romance and science fiction appear to be the best selling genres in the ebook realm.

Bob and Kate agreed that ebooks are changing the economics of publishing, in particular with backlists: authors with large backlists can use ebook publishing to their advantage, and ebooks (as well as POD) allow publishers to keep older titles in print as well as promote them when new interests arises in the topic. Here again is the need for proofreading, for authors who put their backlists into ebook formats by scanning the printed books.

None of the panelists spend much time reading ebooks themselves. Moderator Waverly Fitzgerald admitted that part of the reason is that she often reads books in the bath.

Of interest:

The day before the conference, Bob’s business partner posted “Keeping up with eBook technology” on their blog, which outlines and explains the 4 (currently) most common ebook platforms.
Bob also suggests searching and commenting on Amazon.com’s KindleBoards for information about ebooks and ebook publishing.
I can’t remember which panelist mentioned this New York Times article, “From Scroll to Screen,” about the history of the reading experience.

I skipped Twitter for Word Lovers (and then of course heard people talking about the session all day afterward). The presenter, Catherine Carr, can be followed on Twitter as @mamatweeta. Carol Fisher Saller is on Twitter as @SubvCopyEd (and you can follow the Author-Editor Clinic at @ae_clinic). Tweets about the conference can be found by searching for the hashtag #RedPen11.

Instead of the Twitter session, I attended a panel on Writing and Editing for Video and Board Games. It was an energetic and fascinating glimpse into an industry that is very definitely not for me. Other developmental editors may be interested however—there’s generally no “editor” position in the industry, but developmental and content editing are very much in play by writer/editors with titles like Narrative Designer). The PowerPoint presentation is available for download from the Northwest Independent Editors Guild’s conference page.

I had to miss the workshops on Self-Publishing: What Editors Need to Know and Secrets of a Successful Proposal in order to attend this one:

Just Enough Marketing for Freelancers

Frank Catalano’s outline is also available online. He was particularly good at bringing “marketing” down to earth and focusing us on the pieces that are necessary for the freelance services we provide. Advertising and promotion are unnecessary, direct contacts and events are absolute musts, and social media is part of an ecosystem anchored by a personal website. (The tweets under #RedPen11 show there are several editors already inspired to create their own websites. And Frank, do you see I’m following your advice exactly on the blog+tweet+Facebook combo?)

Saturday may have been the last warm, sunny day in Seattle for a long time to come, and yet I did not make it outside of the conference walls to the reflexology path on the Bastyr University grounds or down the hill to the wooded trails in St. Edward State Park.

Instead I attended a round table discussion on Collaborative Editing as a Business Model, hosted by editor Leslie A Miller and book publicist Andrea Dunlop, both of Girl Friday Productions. The editors (and publicist) at Girl Friday demonstrate the creativity that was called for in Carol Fisher Saller’s keynote: navigating the changing publishing landscape, experimenting with new economic models and collaborations, broadening the array of services they can offer and building partnerships with other publishing professionals.

The last session of the day was again by the elegant and inexhaustible Carol Fisher Saller, on “Subversive” Copyediting—because, she said, nobody would buy a book called “The Sensible Copyeditor.”

For me, one of the greatest benefits to the conference overall was hearing from and talking with so many other editors on the journey. I have been re-inspired to reach for creativity and excellence not only in my editorial skills, but in my technological, negotiating, marketing, and work/life skills as well.

What did you take away?

—Kyra Freestar

P.S. For more comments about the conference, go to Twitter and search for the hashtag #RedPen11, or find the Northwest Independent Editors Guild on Facebook.

Updates November 2011
Vancouver, B.C., editor Eva van Emden has posted her own summary comments on the conference, including links to summaries of the book proposal and marketing sessions. She also reminded me that some of the conference session handouts are available on the Northwest Independent Editors Guild website.

Author Interview: Joe Follansbee on Editors and Self-Publishing

2011-09-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

Over the seven years that the Author-Editor Clinic has been working with writers on their full-length manuscripts, publishing has undergone many changes. Primary among them has been the increasing number of writers who self-publish. Quite a few authors we’ve worked with editorially have gone on to explore both POD publishing and now ebook publishing. (Published titles we know about are listed on our website.)

Joe Follansbee, a Seattle writer and savvy self-publisher in the field of maritime history, is one such author. After having explored iUniverse with his book Shipbuilders, Sea Captains, and Fishermen: The Story of the Schooner Wawona, he produced both a POD and a Kindle version of The Fyddeye Guide to America's Maritime History. Joe has now released a Young Adult novel, Bet: Stowaway Daughter, as an ebook in both Kindle and EPUB formats. I am a big fan of this new novel, set in the 1930s in Seattle and off the Alaskan Coast, and highly recommend it (you don’t need an E-reader, but can download it for $0.99 through Kindle’s free app for computers and other devices or from Google Books).

Joe has joined us on the blog this week to answer some questions about his writing career, how he’s created and marketed his self-published books, and how he views the role of an editor in this new world where authors more and more often self-publish in a variety of formats.

—Barbara Sjoholm

Can you tell us something about your writing background and how editing fits into your work?

I have been writing professionally since 1986. Most of my early experience was in daily journalism; I worked for daily newspapers in Washington, Oregon, and California and freelanced for a tourism guide publisher. I also spent eight years as a reporter and producer in public radio, with my final position as a news director in the Minnesota Public Radio network station in Rochester, Minn. In recent years, I’ve written technical books, articles for general interest magazines, and a young adult novel that I will publish independently this fall.

I’ve always felt that editing was critical to my success as a writer. Most editors have tried to help me make my work better, which helps both of us in the long run. Of course, editors have motives distinct from writers, but ultimately, a good editor/writer team results in a product better than either could have produced by themselves.

You’ve self-published in several different formats: iUniverse, CreateSpace, and now Kindle. What have you learned from each of these experiences?

The expanding world of print-on-demand and author services teaches one lesson: The old world of centralized control of the printed word is gone forever. In the bad old days, because of the costs associated with producing and distributing books, traditional publishers were the only organizations with the capital to make books. For the most part, authors were dependent on publishers to reach an audience with their ideas.

We are now in a transition period in which the center of power is shifting toward the author. Most aspiring authors, working through author services companies such as iUniverse or CreateSpace, can finance the production of a printed book for $1,000 or less. If the author focuses on an ebook, the costs are even lower. While traditional publishers still have considerable power in the marketplace, and authors are still wise to submit work to the Big Six and their smaller cousins, unsold manuscripts no longer have to sit on a shelf with no future. The author can enter the marketplace on his/her own, and take the risks once reserved to major corporations.

One consequence of this change is the greater responsibility that rests on the independent author. Smart authors who strike out on their own understand the necessity for an editorial partner, usually an editor, even if it’s only for copyediting. (The most common complaint I see of independently published work is the apparent lack of proofing.) For example, I sought out an editor to review my manuscript for Bet: Stowaway Daughter, and she made several important suggestions on a range of issues. I’ve also asked about a dozen people, including members of my “young adult” target audience, to read and comment, and I made several changes that came out of this informal focus group. In the traditional model, the author may have simply submitted an accepted manuscript and waited. An independent author needs to be more assertive about quality control.

What have you done to market your books?

Independent authors like myself have another new responsibility: marketing. In the past, authors could rely on traditional publishers to market their books to bookstores and the general public, at least minimally through catalogs and trade fairs. Independent authors don’t have this luxury, and the smart authors take advantage of marketing options offered by author services companies, such as CreateSpace.

However, these marketing services can be pricey. In my case, I have the technical skills to conduct online campaigns, so I purchased only the marketing services I could not perform myself. For example, I bought high-quality bookmarks, business cards, and postcards for my book The Fyddeye Guide to America’s Maritime History. I also hired an illustrator to create compelling cover art for Bet: Stowaway Daughter. However, for email list and distribution services, I use MailChimp, which is free for lists of up to 500 addresses. I also built the computer files needed for ebook production.

Here’s a partial inventory of marketing material I have created myself for my projects:

Website (http://www.fyddeye.com)
Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/Fyddeye.Guide)
Twitter account (http://twitter.com/fyddeye)
Video trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Hibetz8gI)
Email newsletter
News releases

For editors considering working with writers who self-publish, what skills would you suggest they develop?

The relationship between editors and independent authors is a perfect example of the ongoing power shift in the publishing world. When authors are paying the bill, editors can no longer expect to dictate even minor changes in a manuscript. However, editors passionate about their craft should not hesitate to follow their instincts and point out all the problems they see.

Editors used to the traditional relationship venturing into this new world may need to approach an author differently, especially an author who needs a lot of hand-holding. More than ever before, an editor will find herself in the role of teacher and supporter, encouraging an author to see mistakes in a positive light, and showing the advantages of a different approach to a character or a scene, for example.

Furthermore, as this new world evolves, editors may also find themselves in the role of project manager or business advisor, helping an independent author take a project from manuscript to finished product on a shelf or in a mobile device. This means editors who have at least a sense for production and marketing in this new world will have an advantage over editors who choose to focus strictly on the text and leave all the other publishing steps to someone else.

—Joe Follansbee

Re: editors and editing

2011-09-16T08:21:00.000-07:00

On September 7, literary agent Rachelle Gardner posted her personal take on “how much editing an agent can and should do”—and specifically, how much editing she can do for her clients. “I realized I was giving away thousands of dollars worth of editorial expertise,” she says, at the expense of doing the work only she can do to sell her clients’ books to publishers.

I like reading agents’ blogs, in part because, like most editors, agents both love books and are in the book business as professionals. So here’s a short list of blogs I like by agents and other publishing professionals:

Rachelle Gardner’s blog, of course.

The Swivet, by Colleen Lindsay, who was an agent for the early years of the blog and is now in business development with the Penguin Group

Nathan Bransford, author and another former agent who was agenting during the first years of the blog, and those posts are still available).

The Forest for the Trees, by veteran editor Betsy Lerner.

The Book Deal, by veteran editor Alan Rinzler.

Editorial Ass, written by an anonymous “recovering editorial assistant”

The Intern, by an anonymous editorial intern …

Note that this list includes blogs by in-house, but not freelance, editors. There are lots and lots of great blogs by freelance editors on the Web, but as a freelance editor myself, I get a different type of information when I read blogs by professionals who play different roles in publishing than I do.

Also note, the list above is short. I'd love to add to it. Please let us know which blogs you like to read, and why.

—Kyra Freestar

Focus on Editing YA Fiction: Upcoming Class from Pamela Greenwood

2011-09-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

Editing young adult fiction was a natural for me when I started doing developmental editing, since I’ve been writing and publishing in the field for about fifteen years, read in this genre, and participate in a young adult book discussion with several other writers and children’s librarians. Fiction techniques apply across genres, from mainstream adult novels to mystery, romance, historical and speculative fiction, to novels for middle graders and teens. But publishers—and young adult audiences—have specific expectations.

One new publisher of young adult fiction, Musa, has an interesting take on what makes YA fiction different: “Part of the fascinating conflict inherent in every YA novel is that a teenager has to handle trouble that he or she isn’t experienced enough to handle.”

An effective writer goes on the journey of discovery with that character, without talking down, without teaching what the writer has already learned through life experiences, with respect for the new challenges in today’s world.

In responding to a writer’s young adult manuscript, an editor will be most helpful when taking these aspects into consideration. The class I’ll be teaching online this October will provide an introduction to—or a deeper understanding of—the current field of young adult fiction. Participants will be analyzing such issues as how to be age appropriate, experiment with voice, and reveal backstory in a way that urges readers on.

There’s a step beyond being able to recognize what’s working and what isn’t in a manuscript: communicating it respectfully and honestly to the writer. This course will build on those values and skills instilled in all the Author-Editor Clinic’s offerings. It’s one of the things that drew me to the Clinic, and I’m pleased to be carrying it through to working with young adult novels. I hope you’ll spread the word about the upcoming session, to editors interested in this age group or to writers with their own works-in-progress. There’s more about the class on our website, along with a FAQ that can be downloaded.

Thanks for sharing the information,

Pamela Greenwood

Editor's Update: Find Pamela's class on editing YA fiction here.

'Tis the season for education

2011-09-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

Happy September, editors!

I always like September. Even after a very full August, I still feel that this, now, is a time to make new plans and renew commitments.

A colleague of mine, Alexandra Howson of Thistle Editorial, recently sent out a newsletter reminding us all that this is the season to “claim your education” — inspired by a speech by feminist author, poet, scholar Adrienne Rich.

Rich asks students to “demand to be taken seriously so that you can also go on taking yourself seriously. This means seeking out criticism, recognizing that the most affirming thing anyone can do for you is demand that you push yourself further, show you the range of what you can do.”

One of the ways I remind myself to take myself and my work seriously is to commit to my continuing education as an editor. Here are some ideas for pushing yourself further, expanding the range of what you can do:

Online classes at the Author-Editor Clinic:

Introduction to Developmental Editing, starting October 5
Focus on Editing Young Adult Fiction, starting October 7
The Business of Freelance Developmental Editing, starting October 18

Online classes elsewhere:

Catalog of courses available through the Editorial Freelancers Association
Online training modules from the people who publish Copyediting newsletter
Certificate programs in editing available online from accredited schools such as UC Berkeley Extension and online programs such as Australian Online Courses

Regional meetings and conferences for editors:

Red Pencil in the Woods conference, September 24, 2011, in Seattle
Regional meetings of the Editorial Freelancers Association and annual conferences of the Editors’ Association of Canada
Open meetings of groups like the Northwest Independent Editors Guild, the Bay Area Editors’ Forum, the Professional Editors Network in Minnesota, and more.

For more, see the amazing list of education options provided by veteran copyeditor Katharine O’Moore-Klopf, in her Copyeditors’ Knowledge Base.

And we’d always like to hear more: If you know of classes or regional organizations that aren’t on these lists, let us know! What are your favorite ways to claim an editorial education?

—Kyra Freestar

State of the Publishing Industry

2011-08-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

Positive news in publishing!

The New York Times quotes Tina Jordan, vice president of the Association of American Publishers as saying, “In each category we’re seeing growth. The printed word is alive and well whether it takes a paper delivery or digital delivery.” Particular growth was noted in professional and scholarly publishing, young adult and juvenile publishing, and adult fiction. E-books grew from 0.6 percent of trade publishing sales to 6.4 percent between 2008 and 2010.

I was out of town and didn't read the paper over the weekend, so big thanks to Kristi Hein for posting this link to the Northwest Independent Editors Guild's listserv. (Remember, you can meet editors talking about e-book publishing at the Guild's conference on September 24 in Seattle.)

—Kyra Freestar

Until September

2011-08-01T15:18:00.000-07:00

The Scandinavians take off the month of July; the French the month of August. In America, we fit in a week or two somewhere. But The Editor’s POV is following the French model this year by declaring August a vacation month (aside from one or two announcements or news too good to pass up). We’ll resume our regular blog posts after Labor Day.

Enjoy your summer,

Barbara Sjoholm and Kyra Freestar

When Magic Is Matter-of-Fact, part 2

2011-07-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

Magic, symbolism and science fiction

In my previous post, I shared some editorial questions I’ve used with writers of manuscripts that used elements of magic in a “real-world” setting. (All examples in this post and the previous one have had identifying details changed or are represented as composites to maintain confidentiality and the creative integrity of the authors.) Similar issues can arise in science fiction, and my third example was a harder call for me, both as a reader and as an editor.

Sci-Fi Symbolism

In this sci-fi manuscript, the skillfully-rendered setting was an obvious extension of our 21^st century Earth. The primary differences from today’s Earth were social and technological advancements. Living organisms, however (humans, cats, cows) were biologically the same. How to explain, then, a living symbol of love that appeared only to the main character? Other elements of the story were internally consistent and corroborated by secondary characters. But none of the characters corroborated this creature, so it raised several possible—and unresolved—meanings.

Because this was sci-fi, I knew readers would make some allowances for the strange. And because this creature was one of the few issues of world building in the manuscript, I could be persuaded that it was an exception to the rule. Not everything has to make tidy sense.

The litmus test, though, was whether this element was doing what the author wanted it to do. My questions with the author centered around world-building and what this creature was intended to mean about the main character:

Are the story world’s “rules” drawn clearly enough to imply exactly what the author wants to about fantastic beings or events?
If the fantastic calls into question the world’s rules, is this intentional?
How much does the author want to guide the reader’s interpretation of this creature? How much does he want readers themselves to grapple with either its existence or meaning—or both?
Do “oddities” imply to the reader the things about the main character that the author wants them to?

After these recent reading experiences, I came away with some other editorial notes:

Stories in first-person POV are particularly susceptible to confusion with magical or symbolic elements because the main character is the only narrator. The impartiality another narrator might bring is by definition absent, so any confusion about the magic will imply something about the main character. Does the use of first-person POV back the author into a corner? Are there ways the author can insert an unbiased POV about the magical elements so the reader is not distracted? (It may seem counterintuitive, but a glimpse of the main character’s own doubt about the symbolic element can maintain clarity in a first-person POV.)

Sometimes authors aim for suspense, but settle for obfuscation. If the author can strategically tie up some open-ended questions, she’s more in control of the reader’s experience. Where does she want them to be thoughtful, amazed, or in the dark? Is the magical realism deployed to support that?

Leaving multiple dimensions of magic and symbolism open to question (for instance, its boundaries and its meaning) may signal an author who is unsure of her overarching voice or theme. Encourage the author to explore—even for just a scene—what happens when she increases the specificity about one aspect of the unreal while leaving others open to interpretation. Playing with this can clarify for her which emphasis allows her message to resonate best. In the end, no one can control what a reader does with a story, but it’s my opinion that readers appreciate being skillfully guided toward understanding the author’s intent. Whether they like or dislike a story, they come away with a clear sense of what it is they’re responding to, while the author maintains his or her voice.

Some authors will need to know their editor is not anti-magic (or anti-symbolism, anti-sci-fi, etc.). I have found it helpful to reference other books or films to give the author a kind of shorthand for showing that anything can work as long as it meets basic reader expectations. At one end of the spectrum might be The Time Traveler’s Wife, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, the movie Big (or more recently, Midnight in Paris) where, improbable as it seems, magic does happen, to normal people in our normal world.

At the other end of the spectrum may be worlds like Narnia or Tolkien’s Middle Earth, or even The Bible, where the fantastic is normal, but the world-building is clear enough that we know what to expect and what not to expect (robots and spaceships in any of these would surprise us).

All of these works work. It’s a matter of bringing enough clarity to enough of the story so that magic doesn’t muddle the story. Instead, magic makes the story.

—Beth Stokes

In Praise of Great Copyeditors: Christina Thompson in the The Harvard Review

2011-07-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

In the new issue of The Harvard Review, editor Christina Thompson gives a description of working with HR’s copyeditor: “The third person in our professional line up, in addition to the printer and designer, is our copyeditor. My relationship with her goes back a mere four or five years, but in that time I have developed a deep attachment to her work. I’m sure no one reads Harvard Review as carefully as she does—it is, after all, her job—but since she’s both the first and, in some sense, the most attentive reader, I’m always curious to see what she has to say. I keep all her marked-up pages to show the students in my editing class (as examples of what they might aspire to), but also because I like her critical marginalia.”

Read the whole editorial here.

Barbara Sjoholm

When Magic Is Matter-of-Fact

2011-07-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

How to work with elements of magic and magical realism

I’ve recently edited a number of manuscripts where authors incorporated impossible or fantastic elements into otherwise matter-of-fact worlds (a technique that sometimes crosses into the realm of magical realism). Used well, these elements give a work undeniable personality, and heighten the meaning of a story. Used haphazardly, they diffuse the impact of a story or confuse readers. What are some ways writers stumble with this technique? And how can editors help writers use magical realism in a way that elevates the story and adds to the reader’s experience?

This post shares some examples of this issue* together with questions I’ve used with authors to help them clarify their thinking. As always, one of the basic tenets of developmental/substantive editing holds true: help authors ensure their stories are accomplishing what they want them to. (*Note: The examples in this post have had identifying details changed or are represented as composites to maintain confidentiality and the creative integrity of the authors.)

Altered States

The first example is from a historical fiction work-in-progress about the Chinese immigrant experience in the 1860s. In it, the author had punctuated the novel’s straightforward reality with dream sequences in which there were magical and symbolic elements.

Two issues arose. First, the writer admitted he wasn’t sure what he was trying to accomplish with the dreams. Second, the text divulged the nature of the dream sequences after the fact. That is, the reader would learn in a “real life” section that the previous section had been (just) a dream. This had the potential to confuse readers and to trespass on their trust. Could they rely on the author to shepherd them through the story so things made sense, especially if some of those things were other-worldly?

These were my questions to the author:

What purposes do the dreams serve, what aspect of the story do they amplify?
What kind of sign-posting would help the reader, while not treading on the author’s style?
Does the author intend to continue using magical elements only in the dream sections of the book (avoiding any reader confusion about the real-world setting), or is there potential for the dreams to “leak” into the real world later in the text?

To strengthen the impact of the dream sequences, we first identified what work the dreams were already doing: adding nuance and complexity to the main character; pulling back the curtain on a cultural subconscious; and giving the author an opportunity to editorialize. Once we spelled this out, the author had a better sense of how he wanted to deploy the dreams, where they were working successfully, and how to use them for more oomph.

To address reader confusion about reality versus dream-state, we tried some alternatives on for size: italicizing the dream sections, leveraging section titles, formatting the text “poetically” on the page, and even using in-line annotation to create a kind of conversation between the two “consciousnesses” telling the story.

Oddities in Our World

In another story, the main character learns he has a brain tumor. He then meets a human woman whom the reader—after putting some clues together—realizes shares many of the physical and emotional characteristics of a benevolent creature from the main character’s favorite myth. After talking with this woman, the main character regains a sense of peace and purpose despite his illness. In the course of the story, no one else sees this being, though the opportunity arises, and the main character never questions the being’s reality.

My guiding questions for this author were intended to uncover how much she wanted this story to be interpreted literally or symbolically:

Regardless of how much she wants to reveal to the reader, what is her definition of the relationship between the woman and the mythological creature?
How much does she want the reader to question that relationship?
How much of an “aha” moment does she want the reader to have when realizing the woman and the mythological creature may be one and the same?
Should the existence of this woman/creature imply to the reader anything about the main character’s physical state?

This author is now in the midst of revisions and it will be interesting to see which aspects he chooses to clarify and which he will leave open to reader interpretation.

In Part 2 of this post I’ll discuss editing a science fiction manuscript and offer a few general thoughts I’ve had about editing manuscripts with symbolic or mythical elements.

—Beth Stokes

Upcoming Class from Barbara Sjoholm: Thinking Like a Developmental Editor

2011-07-25T12:15:00.000-07:00

I’ve been teaching developmental editing in one way or another for about eight years, mostly to people who already have had some editing experience, whether it be copyediting or proofing. Many editors have a yen to work more directly with writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. These editors can find it challenging to move from correcting grammar to analyzing an entire manuscript. In the current eight-week class I teach online through the Author-Editor Clinic (Introduction to Developmental Editing), we practice doing just that: adapting our strengths in other forms of editing to focusing on issues like character, plot, and narrative pacing.

But in addition to working with more or less experienced editors, I’ve long wished to teach people with little or no experience as editors what it means to respond intelligently and usefully to a writer’s manuscript. My interest comes being a writer myself and from having taught creative writing classes and workshops--and just hanging around other writers for many years and hearing what they say about colleagues' work.

A writer can be another writer’s best critic—or her worst. A writer can understand just what is being said or not said in a memoir or novel, where the story’s heart is, and what’s stopping the writer from getting to the psychological core of the piece. A writer knows instinctively about blocks and feints, about moments of fake honesty and drippy sentiment—she’s usually written many such scenes herself and then rewritten them. But most writers have some difficulty communicating their thoughts to other writers. They may be too blunt or too directive. They may dive immediately into what they would do instead, if they were writing this story.

Hence, my decision to teach an online class this September that is designed more with the untried editor in mind: she who writes, or would like to write, or would like to edit fiction and creative nonfiction, or would just like to be a better reader to her writer friends or a more effective workshop participant.The readers of this blog, as near as I can figure, are mostly professional editors. However, if you know a writer who would benefit from a very introductory course (if only to better understand what goes into being edited) or have a friend with an interest in developmental editing, please pass the word. There’s more about the class on our website, along with a FAQ that can be downloaded.

Thanks for spreading the news,

Barbara Sjoholm