writers’ groups

What Is Editing Worth?

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 16 Comments

Ask a bunch of editors what good editing is worth and they’ll probably reply that it’s invaluable, priceless, and indispensable.

Listen to us talk for a while and we’ll probably get around to the books we’ve read that were either abysmally edited or (probably) not edited at all. What’s the matter with those writers? we wonder. How can they put their names on something that’s so disorganized or riddled with typos and grammatical errors?

Being both a writer and an editor, I think about this a lot. “Value” is a shifty word in English. “Valuable” and “invaluable” mean more or less the same thing. Plenty of value can’t be measured in money, but when you have to pay for it, money has to be considered. Editing has monetary value to me as an editor because it pays the rent. For me as a writer, whatever I spend on editing is money I can’t spend on book design, cover illustration, and marketing. Besides, I can do it pretty well myself.

The inescapable fact is that editing can’t be automated. If some outfit promises to “edit” your 300-page manuscript for a dollar a page, you can be sure that they’re not doing much more than running a spellchecker and a grammar checker through it, and maybe cleaning up the formatting. In my book that’s not editing: it’s word-processing.

Depending on what level of editing is called for, editing involves going through your manuscript page by page, line by line, even word by word. This is not like reading for pleasure. It takes time. For a book-length work, it takes a lot of time. Hypothetical example: Take a 300-page,  75,000-word manuscript. (In publishing, a page is conventionally reckoned at 250 words.) If the ms. is well written and has no structural problems, a good copyeditor might be able to clock 10 pages per hour. That’s 30 hours’ worth of work. Say the copyeditor is charging $30 an hour. (Some charge more, some charge less, but you can get a good copyeditor for $30/hour.) That’s $900 right there.

A manuscript that, as we say in the trade, “has problems” will take longer to edit. At 5 pages/hour, that’s 60 hours. At $30/hour, that’s $1,800. If the problems are serious enough, you may have trouble finding an editor who’ll work for only $30/hour. There are few things more frustrating than being asked to copyedit a manuscript that has structural problems. It’s like frosting a cake that’s collapsed in the middle and didn’t taste all that good to start with.

I don’t know about you, but $1,800 would put a huge dent in my budget, even if I could pay it off over time. I’m never surprised when a writer has sticker shock at an estimate for editing. Editors can say that editing is “priceless” and “invaluable” because we’re not paying for it. When a service costs that much, “priceless” and “invaluable” go out the window. Writers who are paying out of pocket — and this includes me — are up against a harder question: “What is editing worth to me?”

It depends. It really is OK to say “not much” or “I’d love to hire an editor but I have to win the lottery first.” Here are some things to think about:

  • Do you want your work to be read by people who don’t have to read it? Do you want them to spend their hard-earned money on your book?

If the answer to these questions is no, you don’t need an editor, so editing may not be worth all that much to you. On the other hand, it might be. I spend my hard-earned money on things I don’t need. (Ask me about the two fountain pens I just scored off eBay. And don’t ask me how much money I’ve spent over the years on training and competing with my dog.)

If the answer is yes, or maybe, or “I’m not sure,” consider the following questions.

  • How good are you at spelling and punctuation?
  • How much experience have you got? How good are you, period? (Be honest now.)
  • Are you in a good writers’ group or otherwise sharing your work with competent and honest writers?
  • What are your plans for your work?
  • Is your work likely to bring in any money? Enough money to make editing worthwhile from a financial standpoint? (Be realistic here. If you’re writing fiction or poetry, the answer is probably no.)
  • What are your goals and priorities as a writer?

And here are some strongly held personal opinions on the subject:

If you aren’t a crackerjack speller and/or you aren’t confident with punctuation, you need help — especially if you plan to submit work to journals, agents, or publishers. These gatekeepers are swamped with far more submissions than they can use. They are looking for reasons to reject incoming manuscripts. Sloppy spelling and punctuation is painfully easy for a competent editor or agent to spot. You might be able to get the help you need from a talented amateur who won’t charge for her time. It depends on how talented and how generous your friends are.

An old printer’s adage: “Cost, speed, quality: Pick any two.” This means, for example, that if you spring for a low price and a fast turn-around time, the quality will probably be less than stellar. If you want a high-quality job done ASAP, expect to pay a premium price for it. This applies to writing too. If you the writer are willing to put in the time, in classes, writers’ groups, and/or self-study, you can get by with less editing. You will also be better able to choose the right editor for your work if you decide to hire one. Just sayin’ . . .

And here’s some free advice for anyone working solo on a book-length manuscript, fiction or nonfiction. Even if you’re cheap, even if your disposable income is barely in positive numbers — think seriously about hiring a pro to critique it. Critiquing costs a lot less than editing because the critiquer is reading your manuscript the way a reviewer might, not going through it line by line. The critiquer will identify both strengths and problems. She’ll probably have suggestions about fixing the problems — but it’s up to you to do the work.

I’ve read several novels in the last year or so that read like good first drafts. Lots of good raw material, but plot holes abounded. Characters did implausible things just because the author said so. Backstory was dumped here, there, and anywhere. Tantalizing leads were introduced — and then dropped. And so on. These are things that can be dealt with in revision, but these novels all went to press in various states of disarray. One of these novels, by the way, was published by a major trade publisher, probably on the strength of the author’s reputation in nonfiction.

Maybe that’s “good enough”? Maybe it is. But ask yourself: When you start reading a book and realize that the author has cut corners, do you keep reading? If you get through to the end, do you recommend the book to a friend? Do you write a glowing online review?

Good editing is expensive, but sometimes it really is worth the money. Your call.

 

Selling Books at the Artisans’ Fair

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 4 Comments

Sorry for long silence — I’ve had deadline-itis in a bad way.

This past Thursday’s deadline wasn’t a surprise. It wasn’t a rush — not until I turned it into one by spending 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. last Friday and Saturday at the Thanksgiving Artisans’ Fair. Along with three other local writers, I was part of “Writers’ Row.” (I blogged about the fair in From the Seasonally Occupied Territories: “A Saner Way to Shop.”)

So I was selling my novel, The Mud of the Place, and my colleagues were selling their books, and it dawned on me that, hey, not only had I written my book, I’d edited at least one of each of theirs.

This made me happy. These books were all good before I got hold of them, but I was proud to have had a hand in making each one a little bit better than it would have been otherwise. Editors are even more invisible than writers. Usually we finish a job, wave bye-bye, and never see the book or paper or story again. It was downright satisfying to see the finished books on display and hear people talk about them.

Not to mention — I know those books inside and out, love them all, and have no qualms about encouraging people to buy them.

vineyard cats smLynn Christoffers is a wonderful photographer. Cats are her favorite subject, so Cats of Martha’s Vineyard was a natural. But she did more than photograph a hundred cats. She interviewed their people and turned those interviews into a book. I’m a chronic dog person, but I still think it’s cool.

cover scan smShirley Mayhew moved to Martha’s Vineyard as a young bride in 1947 and has been here ever since. Her personal essays, collected in Looking Back, not only chronicle a quietly remarkable life; they provide a window into the last six-going-on-seven decades in this particular place — a place that’s often seen from the outside but rarely from within.

Cynthia RiggsMURDER ON C-DOCK cover sm took up mystery writing at age 70, after a career that included writing for the National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian, running a ferryboat company on the Chesapeake Bay, rigging boats on Martha’s Vineyard, and raising five children. The 11th book in her Martha’s Vineyard Mystery Series is due out from St. Martin’s Press in the spring. The previous ten were all for sale on Writers’ Row, but pride of place went to Murder on C-Dock, which is hot off the press (official pub date isn’t till next month) and which I copyedited. It begins a new series, drawing on the author’s 12 years living on a houseboat on the Washington, D.C., waterfront. It’s got such a stupendous cover that I’m determined to hire the artist, Elizabeth R. Whelan, to do the cover of my novel in progress.

Cynthia, by the way, contributed “On Being Edited” to this blog back in October. Her account of an Edit from Hell has been viewed more times and received more comments than any other Write Through It post. Good! I’m here to report that to my mind Cynthia is an ideal client: she writes well, takes her writing seriously, and appreciates careful editing. She also hosts the writers’ group that both Shirley and I belong to.

Writers usually work in isolation, so face-to-face contact with readers and prospective readers is exhilarating. It can also be exhausting: The Artisans’ Fair was busy from the time the doors opened at 10 till they closed at 4, which meant we were “on” for six consecutive hours. This is why I didn’t come straight home, go for a walk with the dog, then buckle down to editing. My brain needed a break.

At odd moments I wondered if we writers really belonged among the weavers, jewelers, leatherworkers, printmakers, and other crafters who work wonders with media more tangible than words. For sure no one objected to our presence, and all of us had a great time. My life is pretty much devoted to words: writing them, editing them, reading them, reviewing what others have written. It’s a little disorienting to be reminded that words aren’t everything, that creativity comes in myriad forms, and that there are plenty of things that words just can’t do.

 

Word Count: Zero

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 3 Comments

If you’re currently in the throes of NaNoWriMo, you might want to put off reading this post till the middle of next month. If you aren’t, or if you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, read on.

OTOH, if you are in the throes of NaNoWriMo, what are you doing here in the first place? Maybe you should stick around.

Here’s the shocking truth: I didn’t write any words this morning. Well, OK, I scribbled some words on pages of notes that had already been scribbled on, but really — I didn’t write any words this morning.

My chair

I’ve blogged about how I don’t measure my progress or a day’s success by the number of words I’ve written. This is true. All the same, writing no words is a little scary, especially when I want to have a few pages to take to my writers’ group meeting on Sunday night. Right now I’ve got nothing.

What I did this morning was sit in my writing chair for an hour and a quarter. To my right, three candles were burning. (Usually it’s just two. This morning I needed all three.) To my left, eight pens were at the ready. My laptop was on the floor, still asleep.

A few days ago, Wolfie, my novel in progress, came to a crossroad. Shannon, my protagonist, had just made a big decision — the one it took lots of red ink to get to. She had no idea what happened next.

Neither did I. This was a problem.

Since I’ve got some experience in community theater, when writing fiction I tend to see myself as the stage manager. My characters move around on the stage. I write down what they do and say. Once in a while, I need to prompt one actor, or summon another who’s lollygagging backstage. Then they take over and I go back to transcribing.

Not this time. This time they were standing around waiting for me to tell them what to do.

I have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen. What I didn’t know was how to get my cast of characters moving in a direction that would bring it — or something like it — to pass. I was staring at a big logjam on the river. Nothing was moving.

Little heap of wood

Little heap of wood

I sat in my chair, reread my notes, scribbled some words here and there.

The logjam in my head morphed into a big pile of cut and split logs, like the ones the wood guy would dump in my yard during the years I was heating with a wood stove.

Being a writer and thus wise in the ways of procrastination, I got it. Anne Lamott nailed it in her classic Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. How do you accomplish a huge project whose boundaries you can’t see, whose completion you can’t imagine? Bird by bird. Word by word. Or, in my case, log by log.

Once I realized that I had to start somewhere, it didn’t really matter where I started. Pick a log, any log.

Turned out I’d known all along what log to start with. After the events that had transpired in the previous twenty-four hours (novel time), the next move was clearly Shannon’s. Well, now it was clearly Shannon’s move. I’d known all along that Shannon had to make a couple of phone calls, but the Internal Editor assured me that this wasn’t enough. How could a couple of phone calls break up that humongous logjam?

Travvy on a mission

Travvy on a mission

By this time it was 8:30 a.m. Time to get out of the chair and go walking with Travvy, my canine companion, on whom Wolfie is based. As I pulled on my socks and hiking shoes, donned vest and cap, and put Travvy’s walking harness on, Shannon was making her phone calls — and lo, the rest of her day lay like a path in front of me, leading toward the plotwise thicket that I knew was up ahead.

Word count: zero, but a breakthrough day nonetheless.

Counting words obviously works for some writers, at least some of the time. For me, the secret is usually to sit down for at least an hour and don’t fidget. I’m writing even if I’m not writing, as long as I’m not balancing my checkbook, answering email, playing on Facebook, or brushing the dog.

Go to the chair. Sit. Rustle papers, scribble words, focus on the work. If the path doesn’t open up today, do the same thing tomorrow.

 

20141121 woodpile 1

 

Letting Go

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 14 Comments

Recently a colleague posted to an online editors’ forum: “How do you tell a client who keeps tinkering to just stop?” Her client’s tinkering was not improving the manuscript. In some cases it was making things worse.

Her client was having a hard time letting go, and with good reason: letting go is hard. Off the top of my head I can think of several excellent manuscripts that are languishing in their authors’ desk drawers or on their hard drives because their authors can’t let them go.

The subject has been on my mind lately because I’m in the process of making an ebook out of my novel, The Mud of the Place. The print version came out in 2008. My final draft was a Word file. The proofs were in PDF. Plenty of corrections and tweaks were made on the proofs. My first step was to transfer all of them to the final-draft Word file. Now I’m proofreading the Word file from which the ebook will be created.

In proofreading mode I’m looking for typos and stylistic inconsistencies. I am not looking to change or rearrange any of the words. Yes, a few times I’ve paused at a word and thought that another word might be better. But I want the text of the ebook edition to be identical to that of the print edition. If I find an error — a genuine, bona fide error — I will fix it.

But the time for tinkering is past, long past.

The urge to keep tinkering is often a sign that Perfectionista is gripping your shoulder and scaring you half to death with her what-ifs. What if you’ve left something out? What if you’ve made a mistake? What if your whole book is a mistake? What if everyone hates your book? What if everyone thinks you’re stupid?

Sometimes Perfectionista keeps you from writing. Other times she wants you to tinker endlessly with what you’ve already written. Whatever she’s up to, the way to loosen her grip is the same: Lower your standards. And no, that doesn’t mean “do shoddy work.” It means that no matter how much tinkering you do, your work is never going to be perfect — and even if it is, someone‘s not gonna like it. You can’t control what anybody else thinks.

Letting go takes practice. You’ve got to have confidence in your work — that takes practice too. If you’ve been sharing your work in a workshop or a writers’ group or with readers who’ll give you honest feedback, you’re well on the way. Sharing your work, after all, is a kind of letting go.

Deadlines can be a big help. When the clock or the calendar says you’re done, you’re done. The train is leaving the station and your story’s on it. When you see your story in print, a few hours or days or weeks later, you probably see something you would have done differently, but the chances are excellent that it’s fine as is.

Especially if you have a good editor acting as your safety net.

And one last thing: It’s easier to let go of one work when you’re hard at work on something new. The new story or essay or book probably won’t leave you much energy to obsess about the one that’s ready to leave home. Kiss it goodbye and move on.

Not ready to let go: The late Rhodry (1994–2008), right, and his buddy Rosie.

Not ready to let go: The late Rhodry (1994–2008), right, and his buddy Rosie.

 

 

 

Writers’ Groups

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 2 Comments

Writers’ groups are like workshops, only less compressed and more ongoing. Writers’ groups are generally free. This is a big plus when you don’t have much in the way of disposable income. Unlike workshops and classes, they usually don’t have instructors. They may have a leader, official or unofficial, but that person’s job is generally to keep things on track, not to teach. In writers’ groups we learn from each other.

You may have had bad experiences in writers’ groups. If you hang out with other writers, you’ve almost certainly heard about a Writers’ Group from Hell. I know they’re out there.

Nevertheless, I’ve been in several writers’ groups over the years, formal and informal, and they’ve taught me a lot. If you aspire to write for an audience of more than one, i.e., yourself, a writers’ group can be beneficial in so many ways. Each meeting is a deadline for you to meet — very helpful if your writing is always taking a backseat to everything else going on in your life. The more work you share with other writers, the braver you’ll get about sharing your work. Other writers’ comments can help you see your own work from different angles — and your comments will help them likewise.

My first writers’ group included mostly poets and fiction writers, all women. Our numbers fluctuated, but there were about six regulars. At each meeting we’d talk about how our writerly lives were going and discuss the work of two or three members. Ideally we’d each get copies of our work to the others before the meeting, but this was long before email so this wasn’t always possible. Once we produced a potluck group reading in which more than 60 women crowded into a smallish community space to enjoy good food and good writing. This was the first public reading I’d ever done. It was wonderful.

A group I was in several years later usually met in the cozy kitchen of one of its members. The kitchen had a fireplace; except in the warmest weather, there’d usually be a fire going. We sat around the kitchen table, sipping coffee (and sometimes Black Bush whiskey), nibbling homemade chocolate chip cookies, and discussing our writing, which included short essays, one-act plays, memoir, and fiction.

At each meeting we’d do some freewriting, all with pen or pencil on paper. We took turns giving a starting word or phrase and setting a time limit — usually 10, 15, or 20 minutes. Then we’d read what we’d written aloud. We didn’t have to, but we nearly always did.

The group I’m in now meets weekly in the sitting room of its leader. She provides popcorn and beverages (usually wine, fruit juice, and water, with hot cider in season); members often contribute other goodies. At each meeting, we pass out copies of our work to everyone else and then read it aloud. As we listen, we mark our hardcopies — a check mark or “good!” for things that stand out, a question mark for things we find puzzling, perhaps an alternative word or wording if one pops into our heads. Then we discuss the work, and when everyone’s had their say, we pass the marked-up hardcopies back to the writer.

As you can see, writers’ groups vary a lot.  No one group is going to be everything to all its members. My current group doesn’t lend itself to in-depth critique: we’re all hearing each piece for the first time, and each piece gets about 20 minutes of our attention. Since most of us are writing book-length works — fiction, history, and memoir — we only see a small chunk of it each week. For comments on overall structure, we have to wait till we’ve finished a complete draft, then enlist volunteer readers or a professional editor to read the whole thing. But the weekly deadline has been invaluable, and so is reading my work aloud, and hearing others read theirs.

Yes, I have been in some groups that weren’t so helpful and that sooner or later fell apart. Keeping a group together is a group effort. I could go on, but instead I’ll quote from Marge Piercy’s poem “For the Young Who Want To”: “The real writer is one / who really writes.” If a group is monopolized by writers who talk incessantly about the writing they didn’t do, or were going to do, or mean to do before the next meeting, it will quickly become useless to the writers who are really writing.

So how to find a writers’ group? Libraries and bookstores are a good place to start looking. I know of groups that have spun off from adult ed classes: the course ended, but the writers decided to keep meeting on their own. If you can’t find one, or one that’s currently open to new members — it’s definitely possible for a group to get too big — try starting one. Start small, say with one or two or three writer friends.

And please share your experiences and tips in the comments!

Aside: “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, or How to Choose a Writers’ Group,” by the novelist and teacher Holly Lisle, is a wonderfully detailed guide, not just to choosing a group but for starting one.

 

Workshop

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 2 Comments

In the summer of 1984, having saved my pennies and summoned my courage, I headed off to Ithaca, New York, for the Feminist Women’s Writing Workshop. Was I ready? Was I good enough?

My poetry chapbook (1989). Cover design by Maggie MacCarty.

I’d never been to a workshop. I’d never taken a writing class. I didn’t know what to expect. Junior year of high school, though, I’d won the school’s writing prize. Since then I’d done lots and lots of self-teaching. The college newspapers had published my op-eds and reviews. More recently, my reviews and essays had appeared in feminist and gay publications. I’d written most of the poems that eventually appeared in my chapbook, Leaving the Island (1989). I was working on a novel.

Maybe most important of all, I was the book buyer for Lammas, Washington, D.C.’s feminist bookstore. For years I’d been immersed in a movement, a community, for which books and magazines and newspapers were crucial, life-sustaining stuff. I saw it every day at work: women discovering words that inspired them, strengthened them, and even changed their lives.

Words were my only instrument, writing and editing my only useful skills. It was time, I thought, to test my vocation.

Me standing on the boathouse deck during a break, ca. 1987

Me standing on the boathouse deck during a break, ca. 1987

The heart of the workshop was our morning critique sessions. At each two-hour session, an hour would be devoted to the work of one participant. In those days the workshop was held at Wells College in tiny Aurora, New York, about 30 miles from Ithaca. These meetings were held on the second floor of the boathouse, overlooking Cayuga Lake.

The day before, the scheduled writers would put copies of their work out for everyone to read. (“Copies” meant paper in those days. In 1984 we all still had typewriters.) We took our homework seriously. When we gathered in a big circle at 9 every morning, everyone was prepared. The scheduled writers were usually at least a little bit nervous.

The ground rules were simple. For the first part of the session, the writer was invisible. Critiquers were to discuss the work with each other, as if she weren’t there. Her job was to listen. She wasn’t to speak. The workshop director got the discussion going by asking a question about the work, then she’d keep the discussion on track by asking more questions, making comments, and when necessary reminding us of the ground rules. With 10 or 15 minutes to go in the hour, she’d close the discussion and give the floor to the writer. The writer could then answer whatever questions had been raised, ask some of her own, and generally respond to the comments made.

Talking writing on the Wells College lawn, ca. 1987

Talking writing on the Wells College lawn, ca. 1987

Taking part in these sessions morning after morning was a powerful experience. As the writer being critiqued, I listened to 18 of my peers focusing all their attention on my work. My work had to stand on its own, apart from me. Sometimes my peers would argue about a particular line. They’d disagree, sometimes heatedly, about what it meant and whether it worked. Gradually it dawned on me that I couldn’t take any single comment, supportive or critical, as the final word. I had to sort through all the feedback and decide how to use it.

As a critiquer, this meant my job was to tell the writer whatever I could about her work, even if I thought my idea was off-the-wall or too personal or even negative. “I don’t understand what’s going on here” is my take on the work, no more, no less. Maybe the writer will find it useful, maybe not. Either way it’s her call. Sometimes as a critique session began, I’d be on the verge of panic because a work had left me cold, or angry, or frustrated. Some works were more polished than others. I learned that I could nearly always come up with something the writer might find useful.

For better or worse, my vocation passed the test. I returned to the workshop for the next three years as one of two assistant directors. By 1988, however, I’d been sucked into the seasonal economy of Martha’s Vineyard, to which I’d moved in 1985, and could no longer escape for 10 days in the summer. The Feminist Women’s Writing Workshop no longer exists, but the critique process I learned there can be replicated anywhere — if the workshop leader (if there is one) and participants are willing to create a safe space for critiquing and being critiqued.

Editing? What’s Editing?

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 1 Comment

Good question. If you ask half a dozen editors, you’ll get two dozen answers. What’s a writer to do?

grammar policeEditing and writing are closely related, but they aren’t the same. Writing creates something new. Editing rearranges, refines, and otherwise messes with something that’s already been created.

Notice that I’m sticking with the verbs here, rather than trying to define what writers do and what editors do. It’s more complicated than “writers write and editors edit.” Plenty of editors are also writers. Most writers do at least some editing: that’s what second, third, and tenth drafts are about.

I encourage writers to learn as much as they can about editing. It makes us better writers. It gives us more control of our work. It saves us money, because the more we can do ourselves, the less we have to pay others to do. And when the time comes to hire an editor, we’re better able to find one who will do justice to our work.

So what’s editing, beyond messing with something that’s already been written? Here’s where it can get confusing. “Editing” can involve anything from correcting typos and grammar gaffes to rearranging paragraphs and even helping a writer build a book from scratch. So we talk about “levels of editing.” Here’s a rough guide to the levels, starting with “big picture” editing and moving down to what I call the “picky bitch stage”: catching spelling and grammar errors.

Ghostwriting. Ghostwriting is writing, not editing. I include it because I’m not the only editor who’s heard this question: “I’ve got a great idea. Can you help me turn it into a book and we can share the royalties?” The answer is no. Ghostwriting is time-intensive and therefore costly. The chances that the resulting product will earn any royalties are close to nil. My standard answer is “Sell your proposal first and then we can talk.” None of the querents has ever come back.

Developmental editing. Like ghostwriting, this involves building the manuscript from the ground up. For big projects, like textbooks, it can involve multiple authors, researchers, designers, and more. For the individual writer, it’s all the work that goes into creating a coherent complete draft. Most of us do our own developmental editing, often with assistance from writers’ groups and those generous people who volunteer to read our work and give us feedback.

Rewriting. Most of us do our own rewriting too. From the individual writer’s point of view, it’s close kin to developmental editing.

Structural editing. The structure of a work is its skeleton. When the wrist bones are connected to the thigh bones, the body doesn’t work too well. All written works have structure. Structure is what guides readers through the story or the essay. When you decide that a scene in the middle of the book has to come near the beginning or a certain character’s motivation won’t make sense, you’re messing with the work’s structure.

typoStylistic editing. This is called all sorts of things, including content editing, line editing, and copyediting. Here you go through the work line by line, asking whether each sentence, phrase, and word says what you want it to say, and in the best way possible. English is a wonderfully flexible language. Choosing the right word and putting it in the right place can make a big difference. Writers’ groups and volunteer readers (aka “guinea pigs”) can be invaluable here. You know what you meant to say, but until you get feedback from readers it’s hard to know how well it’s coming across.

prooffreadingCopyediting. I hire out as a “copyeditor,” but my work includes plenty of stylistic editing so I have a hard time distinguishing one from the other. Let’s say here that copyediting focuses on the mechanics: spelling, punctuation, grammar, formatting, and the like. With nonfiction, it includes ensuring that footnotes and endnotes, bibliographies and reference lists, are accurate, consistent with each other, and properly formatted.

Proofreading. This level is the most mechanical of all. It means catching the errors that have slipped through despite all the writer’s and editor’s best efforts. (No matter how expert the writer and editor are, there will be errors. Trust me on this. I just caught one in this sentence. No, I won’t tell.)

The Editors’ Association of Canada has a handy page on its website: “Definitions of Editorial Skills.” Other organizations, publishers, and individual editors break the skills down differently, but this list gives a good idea of all the skills that are subsumed under “editing.” Not to worry: Unless you work on big, complex projects, you’re unlikely to need more than a few of them. If you do work on big, complex projects, your team probably has all the skills required, or knows where to find them.