The Editor

What do editors do? Well, copy editing means reviewing a manuscript for basic mechanics like grammar, punctuation, and style; and sometimes to smooth out sentence structure to make a text more readable. Rewriting is considered editing as well. The difference is that by the time the revision is completed, the editor has changed nearly everything that was originally on the page—but what the writer has gained is something a reader will want to read and text that will express what the original writer meant to say but couldn’t find the means.

Here’s an example of a rewrite I did for a memoir.

Original

I never met the man who changed my life. I simply saw his image and heard an electronic transmission of his voice. Some people might feel a bit uncomfortable to admit that television had a positive change on their lives, but it did on mine.

Revision

Some of us are lucky to have mentors and guides that help us negotiate the minefields we encounter in life. I was one of those fortunate individuals. One difference, however, was that I never met the man who served as my guide. I watched him on television. I felt a bit embarrassed over this idea that the idiot box had a major role in guiding me through my crisis, especially when I considered that I had four years of college and six years of post-graduate work. But today I’m alive and well whereas I could have easily ended up a corpse in a ditch along some abandoned road in rural Mississippi, a bullet in my head. I learned a good lesson. You can get help in the most unlikely of places.

You might notice the "edit" is a lot longer than the original. Usually, you would expect the opposite. But there are no rules about editing, revising, or rewriting. Sometimes a writer uses too many words; sometimes not enough. The trick is to just get it right. As an editor, I will help get it "right" for you.