The editing process helps you to clarify your thoughts. An editor can be a problem-solver and a critic, working with you to strengthen your ideas. An editor can create form and structure, add depth, and polish expression. In other words, an editor is a facilitator of communication. Currently, there is a massive influx of authored materials in the market and on the internet. An editor will improve the quality of your prose to set it apart from all the untested, unhoned work out there. Anyone who wants to disseminate ideas can benefit.

An editor serves the manuscript and the author; her goal is to aid the author in making the writing as good as it can possibly be. Because of her experience doing so, she may have insights that the author has not. An editor’s fresh eyes can offer new perspective and identify issues with a manuscript that the author may be too close to see. But at every step of the process, the author is always the final judge of any changes to be made.

An editor knows that different pieces have different needs. For example, her expertise in language can make your business writing more concise, more effective, more clear, and more professional. On the other hand, she can also help preserve the idiosyncratic voice of a character in your novel.

I personally find editing and counselling authors very rewarding. Manuscripts feel like puzzles. I analyze pieces a few times before beginning to articulate my reflections and suggestions and finally discussing those discoveries with authors to help them get a firmer grasp on what they want the piece to be. I really enjoy trying to see inside a piece to understand what it is and to determine what it might need.