In a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog, Daphne Gray-Grant offers advice for surviving your first professional edit. Despite being an experienced editor and having shown her work to a number of beta readers, Gray-Grant wasn’t prepared for the amount of red ink she saw on the first manuscript she gave to an editor. “How was it possible that this editor found so many fresh problems?” she wondered. “Did she really know what she was doing?”
That kind of surprise isn’t uncommon, so to prepare yourself, Gray-Grant recommends:
- Choosing your editor carefully. Find an editor who specializes in your genre, interview them, and ask for and check their references. Ask about the quality of their work and what they were like to work with. Ask for a test edit, even if you have to pay for it.
- Preparing for a lot of red ink. You are hiring someone to comment on your manuscript, so be prepared for comments.
- Taking it slow. Take time to absorb the editor’s comments. Don’t have a knee-jerk reaction to the feedback. Red ink doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer and it doesn’t mean the editor is a bad person. They are there to help you.
- Making simple edits first and fast. Tackle the easy to fix problems, like typos and grammar issues, first.
- Tackling the tougher edits. Even when you agree with an editor’s comment, you might not know how to fix it right away. Take time away from the manuscript to think. Seek additional feedback and advice.
- Ignoring feedback that doesn’t work. Editors aren’t omniscient. It’s ok to disagree with some of their comments or not implement changes. If you working with a traditional publisher, that might be harder, but you can still have a conversation about suggested changes.
