Challenges

I am gratified to see some of you stepping up to the plate and attempting the teasers. You leave me laughing when I read them. The creativity is astounding. My hat is off to you all.

Today I'm going to talk about the challenge of editing for someone else. I work as an editor for Treble Heart books and before you start sending me your manuscripts, I am NOT an acquiring editor. I do the line edits - the one where I am forced to read every word, note where every punctuation mark is (or isn't), check your timelines, consistency, plot, etc. I do it all. I've been doing this for several years, both as a contractor to three different e-publishers and as a free-lancer. I make much better money as a free-lancer. I figured it out once - I earn the equivalent of about thirty cents an hour to do the full edit. The one I'm working on now has cut that in half. Several times, I've put in the time and done a full edit only to have the author pull the work at the last minute - which means I don't get paid at all. Editors don't do this to get rich - we do it for the love of the written word.

And therein lies the rub. When I receive a book to edit, I work hard to make it the best book it can possibly be. I edit and correct and check word usage and definitions. Yes, I do make mistakes - I'm not infallible. But when I send an author my suggestions - and they are only suggestions because the work does belong to the author - I am trying to make the book more marketable.

So for those of you working with editors - whether with a house, and agent, or a free-lancer, please, do them a favor and really look at what they say. Read your work out loud with the way you did it and with their suggestions. And give them the benefit of the doubt. They aren't in this to cut you down, but to make your book better. The better your work, the more we earn. Trust me, we want it to be as good as possible.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox.

Today's teaser: Finish this scene using the following: a spider web, crystal ball, CD disk
I followed the map found in my grandfather's trunk...