Working With an Editor

My editor recently sent back his suggestions and corrections about my text for Arkansas River Guide, and I'm busy implementing them.

Evan found a lot for me to fix! Attempting to write and publish without using an editor would be the surest way I know of having to crawl off somewhere and change my name. (Somebody else wrote that phrase once, in a different context.)

There will be simple spelling errors that result from mistyping. There will be poorly constructed sentences that need to be fixed. Wrong words will have been used. Other problems are there. And they ARE there! You can be sure of that.

Your writing may look perfect, but that's just because you've been looking at it for a long time. You wouldn't even notice an upside down paragraph, let alone simpler errors. Your writing isn't perfect. Far from it.

I pay attention to everything my editor notices. I may apply a different solution than what Evan suggested, and I often end up rewriting that whole paragraph! But if something bothers the editor about a certain passage, I want to know why. You give up no freedom. Final choices are yours.

Editors can work in another way, too. They can go ahead and make the changes as they see fit. This may suit you if you aren't a professional writer but you need something finished on schedule. I don't use this method, myself.

Don't even think about publishing a book without an editor. I've even seen books that have duplicate pages! You don't wanna do that.