About Professional Editing

After the intense and thrilling moments of creating a written work, the process of editing is one of the most integral and important journeys a serious writer will take.  My goal as a professional editor is first and foremost to understand, guide, and support the unique vision another writer has for her/his manuscript or any other project.  I am always fascinated by the myriad experiences, feelings, and thoughts that inspired a writer to write, and I share that sense of triumph in translating these into words, lines, and sentences. By participating in the gesture of writing, writers have accomplished the truly laudable feat of making the ineffable expressible. Everyone who is seriously dedicated to writing should feel great pride and great optimism about life in future, because the very process of opening the mind and soul to the genuinely thrilling process of working with language, means one is that much closer to being able to impart important experiences to readers.

Even though we all learned in school that writing is not a one-time, static action, but a process of writing and re-writing, we often don’t realize just how crucial this point is, especially if we are among those who wish to become serious writers and have our writing taken seriously.  It is one of the great myths of writing that whatever comes out first is always best. Even the most cutting-edge, experimental writers—if they’re being honest—would say the work that appears to have flowed out effortlessly and immediately, is usually the product of dedicated and intense revision and re-envisioning. While certainly a small percentage of the best-known literary works emerged in an accomplished form on the first try, it is rare, even for the most talented writers, to produce something lasting in only one draft. The process of shaping writing in a way that holds meaning for readers is truly a long journey of re-evaluating, re-envisioning, and re-working, until the meaning that appears utterly clear in a writer’s head is equally clear to someone else as written on the page or computer screen.

Serious creative writing may a career, but for most of us, it is first and foremost a vocation, a calling, a passion. Being a writer is a suspenseful adventure of creating worlds in which others may partake; it is a joyful struggle to take common language and make uncommon and riveting images that come alive for readers. Serious writers deserve to take credit for the hard work they engage in to write most honestly, clearly, and meaningfully. Yet that credit must be earned by taking responsibility for communicating intent and clear meaning to those who cannot possibly know what is going on in a writer’s head.

It is in this realm of responsibility to readers that engaging the help of a professional editor is most valuable. An editor is both the voice of a writer’s encouragement, and, the voice of legions of unknown readers, who want nothing more than to gain the deepest possible understanding and emotional/spiritual sustenance from what is written.

For those who have never contemplated publishing before, or have never used a professional editor, the editing process may appear boring, confusing, frustrating, overwhelming, or all of these combined. I hope to calm any anxieties writers may have by pointing out, that in truth, editing is as natural a facet of writing as breathing is in singing. The best editing becomes a process of unfolding the meaning of your writing, intuiting the true depths of your intent for writing, and discovering the ultimate significance of what you’ve written.

Editing proceeds in a logical, step-by-step, and cumulative process, whereby the intent,  meaning, and themes of a written work are clarified, strengthened, and ordered in such a way as to provide the work with the maximum power to impact readers fully. The writing, editing, revision, and rewriting process allows an author to discern which elements of a manuscript are contributing to its overall power and meaning, and which elements are detracting from these goals.  The professional editor is a partner with a writer in the journey of finding the heart of meaning of a written work, and collaborating on the best possible use of language to communicate that meaning to readers. Editors trust that writers are creating original (meaning, not borrowed or copied) works, and writers trust that editors will believe in the work, become invested in its development, and ultimately, apply all their professional skills toward the goal of impacting the work’s target audience.

The editor serves as the symbolic reader by assessing work in an objective fashion to determine what elements of writing best serve the intended meaning of the work. The editor’s role is not to bully the writer, write the material for the writer, or sugar-coat any difficulties that the manuscript in its current form presents. Because the editor is ultimately serving the character and life of the work itself, it is the editor’s duty to be as truthful and professional as possible in working with the writer to re-shape and literally, re-envision, those parts of the manuscript that may not be working successfully in the current draft.

Writers are often put off when they first realize the sheer amount of time that serious, or what is called substantive editing, takes to properly shape a written work into publishable form. Many writers have just spent months or even years in the writing process, and are very anxious to have their books in print or online as soon as possible. There is no way to get around the fact that substantive editing is a collaborative process that requires ongoing commitment to rewriting on the part of the author, and ongoing commitment to devoting intense attention to all aspects of a manuscript on the part of the editor. The new books that seemingly appear overnight at one’s local library or bookstore are the results of normally 12-24 months of editing alone, not to mention the time that was previously spent on writing the first few drafts, and the time after final editing to physically produce the volume.

The most honest editors will be direct and truthful with authors and say that editing is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires a collegial spirit between editor and writer, lots of back-and-forth communication over a long period of time, and the ability of both parties to deal patiently and respectfully with the frustrations that naturally occur in any process of making a creative work.

It is a difficult fact of life that the avenues of traditional print book publication for first-time authors have diminished significantly. Given the current dominance of online and on-demand publication, many print-based publishing houses have given up their time-honored practice of accepting unsolicited submissions from unknown authors. Most editors are well aware of the necessity for first-time authors to increasingly undertake tasks of promotion and marketing, for which most major publishing houses took responsibility in the past. The advantages and disadvantages of print and digital publication are worth a lengthy discussion with a professional editor, who may have insights into the best way to pique the interest of the target audience the author is trying to reach.

Writing is indeed a revelation to and of one’s self. The joy and glory of writing is in those moments of sudden and unexpected epiphany, when we have a thunderbolt moment of insight and realization about the nature and character of our own lives, and the life of the world in which we participate. The best editor is one who has also undertaken this sacred journey, who knows how to recognize a writer’s true voice, who will help you discover your natural writer’s voice, and who is able to strengthen a work a writer has created without changing the unique voice that brings it to the world.

©2024 by Alexandra Burack