FAQs
- What education and/or training do you have that relates to your work?
I am a member of the Editorial Freelance Association and participate in several discussion lists which provide insight into currents issues and the latest insights in editing. I also do lots of reading and hope to participate in writing and editing conferences this year.
- What advice would you give a customer looking to hire a provider in your area of work?
Look for an editor that respects you and your work. You've done a lot of hard work, and you deserve to be treated with respect. No editor can promise that you'll get published. The best we can do is get your work to shine, to get it ready for publishing. Ask for a sample edit. A fair sample will be about five manuscript pages (1250 words). This way you can see if their style will match up with yours. Not every editor is a good match for every writer.
- What questions should customers think through before talking to professionals about their project?
There are three main categories of editing; developmental, copy, and proofreading. Many people think proofreading is synonymous with editing, but proofreading is the lightest form, with only minor changes to the work, done during the final review of a piece. Developmental editing ensures that a work is cohesive and tells a good story. This is my favorite because I get to really help the author take their work to the next level. It can be hard for an author to see the missing pieces to their work, and that's where I come in. Copy editing is where the bulk of the work is done. Depending on how heavily edited the client wants it, this can be as minute as line by line, meticulous work. This work fixes spelling, grammar, character names, capitalization, pronouns, and anything else necessary.