The Need for a Professional Editor

Okay, so I know that at least Linda is still reading this blog. (Thanks, Linda, for giving me reason to keep blogging! And congratulations on writing 45,000 words of fiction and finishing your nonfiction proposal all in less than 30 days. You deserve more than just a gold star!)

Linda has asked me to go back to the topic of editing and clarify an important point – the need for professional editing. I offered a bunch of tips of self-editing your work, and I mentioned that I happen to be a fairly good editor of my own work. However, I did not mean to imply that it isn’t a good idea to get professional editing help for your nonfiction projects. In fact, I highly recommend hiring a professional editor, especially if you are going to be self-publishing your work.

You can edit your work numerous times and still miss content issues and serious grammatical mistakes. Because you know your topic so well and are so close to your work, after you’ve edited your project a certain number of times your eyes can no longer see even the most glaring errors – not to mention the smaller ones. A fresh set of eyes on your work always proves helpful, and a set of eyes that are honed to look for anything concerning grammar and punctuation, content, structure, and flow of a book can be invaluable.

Believe me, I realize that hiring a professional editor represents an expensive undertaking. (I know what people pay me to edit their books -- and what they pay other editors that charge more than I do. Plus, I need a good fiction editor for my novel, and I haven't yet been able to afford one.) So, I’d love to be able to tell those of you who can’t afford to hire a professional editor like myself that it’s enough to find a good friend who was an English major in college to give your work a read through, but I can’t in good conscience do that. It’s true that finding a few good readers for feedback and a bit of editing helps. Don’t ever turn down the offer, but distinguish between “readers” and “professional editors.”

I’m editing a project right now that my client told me was edited twice before. She actually paid two people – one who said she was an editor and one who was a school teacher (I’m not sure if she is an English teacher or not) – to read her manuscript. She was amazed when I sent the first chapter back to her. The other two “editors” hadn’t corrected even half of what I corrected. They had left all her passive sentences (those using any derivation of the verb “to be”) without even mentioning that the book consisted of only about 15% active sentences. (Passive sentences are boring to read because they create weak and uninteresting writing.) These two people also were very familiar with the subject of her book, and, therefore, didn’t notice when she wrote about something without fully explaining it in a way that anyone – even someone not familiar with the subject – would understand. (I read every book I edit as if I know nothing about the subject at all, even if I know something about it. And I assume the reader knows less than I do. In this way, I help the writer fill in content gaps, or questions that might have been left in the readers’ minds. You can’t do this for yourself, nor can someone else who knows your subject really well – unless they are trained to do so.)

Also, distinguish between “editors” and “proofreaders.” After all the editing is complete, you need a good proofreader to catch any typos, misspellings, extra spaces, etc, but your proofreader shouldn’t be making grammatical changes. I edited a book for a client who then hired a proofreader who thought she was an editor. He let her go through the whole book and change every “he” and “she” to “he/she.” She also changed how I was using commas in a series, so the usage no longer was consistent throughout the book.

So, by all means learn how to be a good editor of your own work. And when you can edit your work no more, hire a professional editor. And when that editor completes the job, hire a good proofreader.

Writing Long vs. Writing Short

My husband calls me the Queen of Verbosity. When it comes to writing (or speaking, I suppose), I’m never at a loss for words. In fact, I rarely suffer from so-called writer’s block. I’ve always got something to say – usually too much to say.

I bring this up, because I swore I would begin posting some shorter blogs. I simply cannot keep writing so much every day here and keep up with my editing work load and actually write and complete my own nonfiction project this month. However, as soon as I made this oath, the next thing I knew I had written another long blog (the one I posted last).

Yesterday, I didn’t write a blog at all. That’s really short! (I was going to write this blog yesterday, but I just didn’t get a chance).

I believe writing long serves a nonfiction writer – and probably a fiction writer as well -- more than writing short, and here’s why. I find it easier to cut and slash and tighten than to have to write more once I’ve finished. You see, if I’ve finished writing, I must have run out of things to write about. (Yes, I do sometime run out of words to put on paper.) For example, if my contract for an article requires 2,000 words and I’ve only written 1,500, I don’t want to have to write another 500 words when I’ve said all I’ve I had to say on the topic already. Those words will be forced and the content won’t be as strong. Plus, writing more might require me doing more research or conducting more interviews.

If, however, I’ve written 2,500 – a much more common problem of mine – and I only need 2,000, I can usually find at least 300 or 400 words to cut that are unnecessary, drivel, redundant, or off the point. More often than not, I can slash whole sentences or paragraphs and solve my overwriting problem. If after this process I find I have written such wonderful copy that I am still left with 100-200 words to cut, I usually can get rid of these by simply tightening sentences and paragraphs. This takes a whole lot more time, but I don’t mind. You know why? When I’m done looking at every sentence and every word in every sentence to see how I can reduce the number of words used, my copy is SO MUCH BETTER. Really.

Also, I have found that editors usually like getting a little more copy than they need. They really hate having to ask a writer to send them more copy because they didn’t get the agreed-upon amount, but they don’t mind cutting a little bit themselves if they get more than the agreed-upon amount. (I was an editor on several publications, and I can assure you that getting too little copy from a writer doesn’t ingratiate you to an editor.) And if they find themselves with some extra space in their magazine or newspaper, they are usually pleased to have an extra 200 words on hand or a sidebar that you just happened to send along. (By the way, you can sometimes earn yourself a little extra money by offering an editor a sidebar, and it might simply be those 300-400 words you just cut from your original article to meet the required word count.)

Well…I could go on…but I won’t. I’ll honor my oath. Except that I wanted to tell you… (You also have to know when to stop writing – when you (and your manuscript) are done. That’s an important thing for a nonfiction writer to learn.)