A Day in the Life of an Editor
The best of the worst
Image credit: Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels
This week has been a busy one with no time to do any research for a helpful post, so I thought I’d share some of the “best of” screenshots that oh-so-accurately illustrate what editors go through on a daily basis. These are real people, real situations, and in almost every instance, people I know in my professional groups. The struggle to remain civil sometimes strains everything in us.
Thankfully, most of the writers we work with are absolutely wonderful. I count “my” authors among the nicest people I know. But every so often these people cross our email paths . . . and if we can’t laugh about these things, then we’ve lost all sense of what’s ridiculous in this world.
This first example is from a conversation about people who reject a significant number of editorial changes and then blame the editor for the inevitable results.
This next one is all too common. For reference, this one is for a developmental editing project that would involve restructuring and in-depth rewriting, thus the slightly higher per-word cost.
Why is it that we give people all the information they need, and then they still act surprised? I can understand a bit of sticker shock now and then, but at least give the editor the courtesy of looking at the information before making them do the preliminary work for nothing.
Competing with a “friend who likes to read” is tough. But I suspect the author will discover that competing with other books that have been professionally edited will be tougher. For perspective, 750 pages works out to roughly 187,500 words—a very long epic fantasy novel, three average fiction novels, or a book the same length as The Fellowship of the Ring or Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire or Dune. And not just a copyedit, but a developmental edit that would take weeks or months to complete.
This final screenshot isn’t a person trying to lowball a price, but just a funny post spotted by an editor in her neighbor group. It’s not what you say, but how you say it. And we editors are all about how you say it.
