Just A Little Red

I feel that as a professional freelance editor I should have worlds of wisdom on this topic: finding the right editor for your book. But I don’t. It is something I am trying to navigate myself as we speak. The reason is because this is not just about finding a good editor, or even a great editor. It isn’t even about finding an editor that YOU will work well with. While these things are all necessary, the big question is who is the right editor for your baby/book? They are interchangeable to me, because my book is my baby. I went through a long and painful birthing process. And now I need to find that special ONE person who will take what I have and shape it into something I can sell (I have obviously moved away from the baby analogy, sorry for the lack of transition).

A person can be an amazing editor, an even better writer and someone you know and respect or someone you instantly gel with on a personal level, but it doesn’t make them the right editor for your book. I have found this out the hard way, both as a writer and an editor. For anyone who has ever looked through agent directories, they will find that most helpful ones include what an agent likes, dislikes and won’t touch. Freelance editors (not those who work for publishing houses) are not officially like this, in my experience. This is our job – we’re professionals and unless my colleagues are independently wealthy, you don’t turn down work simply because of the subject matter (hate-propaganda and other extreme examples are not to be considered in this, but in general, this is the rule). We need to put food in our mouths, have a mortgage or rent and some of us have families to provide for. I have my favorites (mystery; thriller; LGBT themed books; women’s lit; self-help books, particularly those that have a humorous tone or are about achieving happiness or interpersonal relationships; EXCELLENT coming-of-age and contemporary fiction; and memoirs, particularly those that inspire, and are medical memoirs, memoirs of love and loss or about overcoming overwhelming obstacles). And I have my least favorites including stream-of-consciousness (I have tried to love this, I want to, but I don’t like reading it, so why would I want to work on it), books that are all tell and no show, and super religious fiction as well as super conservative or narrow nonfiction with an agenda. (I once had to work on a stream-of-consciousness memoir that really just a woman on a soapbox bashing men, blacks, Jews and the gays. I suffered through 127 single-spaced pages and I promised myself, never again.)

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