A lot of Indigenous writing is under-edited, because many non-Indigenous editors don’t feel like they have a way in to the text and are scared of making a mistake. Other times, it can be over-edited, because the editor has shoehorned the story into a format that reflects European values and …
Working as an in-house editor often means you will be editing the work of untrained writers. You may come across colleagues who don’t want to be writing in the first place, so how do you convince them that your editing services are valuable? Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes people reject edits …
As a freelance fiction editor, I find it incredibly rewarding to help an author shape their story or find their voice. And as an author, I know firsthand how transformative the insights of a strong editor can be. But professional editing can be expensive, so what do you do when …
In Part 1 of this series, I discussed how getting to know yourself well, setting up your environment for success and exploring scaffolding strategies are keys to freelance business success for editors with ADHD or other forms of executive dysfunction. In this article, I will share my next two tips: …
Neurodivergent or neurotypical, freelance business owners share many of the same struggles: choosing a niche, finding clients, balancing admin time with billable time, juggling deadlines and allocating time, money and energy. In my previous article, I shared my story of how I discovered I had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) just as …
If you asked 10 editors how they approach sample edits, you’d probably get 10 different answers. Some editors charge for sample edits, some offer samples for free and some don’t do sample edits at all. Some editors begin on page one, and others edit an excerpt from the middle. So …
This past June, I launched a new digital tool for academic writers — my preferred clients — at writingwellishard.com. This tool enables academics to compare features of their own writing with the features of a writing sample of their choice. For instance, users could see whether they write sentences that …
Picture books: the artwork is so integral that it’s part of the name. But unless you’re working with an author/illustrator, editing a picture book usually means analyzing a text-only manuscript. For contemporary picture books, the illustrations are more than adornments; they’re a critical part of the storytelling. At the manuscript …
When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. — Lao Tzu The mentor role is ancient and storied. Mentor, in Homer’s Odyssey, is the friend of Odysseus who tutors Telemachus, Odysseus’s son. Athena, disguised as Mentor, steers young Telemachus’s search for his father. Those ancient Greeks did spin good …
My name is Sue, and I’m a long-time, full-time freelancer. While most of the time I’m in the trees of my business, once in a while I zoom out to the forest and think about how different my way of working has been from that of other people. For 20 …