Why Everyone Needs an Editor

I was physically awkward as a kid. Anything athletic was a nightmare. In high school, which was the peak of those horrendous presidential fitness standards, I’d trudge laps around the football field in gym class while absolutely certain that I was going to die. I was a reader, not a runner. Maybe there were people who could do both? Not me.

In college, friends started asking me to read their papers and theses for them. This was how I became an amateur editor before becoming a professional one. Once I tried to clarify a particularly impenetrable, overly complex, word-salady paragraph in a friend’s philosophy essay. She said, Peternelle, you can’t edit that, it’s a quote from Heidegger. I said, well Heidegger needed an editor. (Then I inserted some quotation marks around the passage.)

Decades later, I was an executive editor for one of the Big Five publishers and in that role I occasionally attended literary award dinners with colleagues. Our publisher would buy a table and we’d be seated next to one of the publisher’s bigger authors whom we didn’t know. Often this was a treat, sometimes it was more challenging. Enough said about that. I can’t recall which event this was, but I was seated next to an author who had published tremendously clever books in the double digits, who was a bestseller, whose books had been made into multiple films, and who had written some oft-quoted writing advice. This author was charming and funny, I was a fan, and I was delighted to be in their company for the evening. I asked this author who their editor was and how they liked being edited. This author said their editor knew better than to try to edit them anymore. This author knew what they were doing; there was nothing an editor could do to improve on their work.

That author was wrong. I knew they were wrong because I’d read their recent books and saw the missed opportunities to make them even better—the laxness and self-indulgence that had crept in. I wasn’t the only one who had noticed this, and I think some folks might have thought the lessening in quality was a product of age. It wasn’t cognitive decline though, not from what I could tell. It was a product of no one telling this author that they’d benefit from editing. Because this author didn’t want to hear it, and they sold enough books that everyone involved figured it didn’t matter. But I thought it mattered. What a waste, I thought, for a book not to be as good as it possibly could be.

Everyone needs an editor, and the very best writers I know, writers who are well published and tremendously professional, wouldn’t dream of having their work appear unedited. Editing isn’t cosmetic, it’s fundamental. As a writer, I know this firsthand. Receiving an editorial letter is agony. We’re tired, we wrote a whole damn book for god’s sake! We want the editor to give us a kiss on the forehead and tell us we’re perfect. Then they have the nerve to find fault! Editors are the worst! And they’re also the best. When I published my first novel after having been a professional editor for many years, I rejected some first draft edits only to relent when I read the second draft and put my pride aside.

I’m an independent editor, meaning that I no longer work for one publisher. Authors hire me to edit their work, either referred to me by another writer I’ve worked with, or an agent who thinks their project has potential but needs work before they sign them, or a publisher who doesn’t have time to help the author make their work publishable (this happens). And of course I’m paid for this.

Not everyone can afford to hire an editor, but everyone benefits from editing. And until the day when you have your very own editor, I have some advice from years and years of editing and writing that can help you make your book (and your writing in general) the best possible version of itself. As I always say to writers: Do as much as you can on your own before you hire me. The better your manuscript is when I get it, the better I can make it.

Future issues won’t be this long (I promise!). They’ll be short and practical. I’ll also occasionally throw in some advice from others, and some book recommendations, because the most effective way to become a better writer is to read good writing. That’s the best advice of all.

Thanks for being here! I’m always open to suggestions for topics to cover, so please stay in touch!

Peternelle

P.S., I showed this to my partner before publishing and he pointed out a typo. So there you go.