by Jamie Chavez | Mar 6, 2017 | Your Editor Says …
A couple-three years ago, I had lunch with an author friend who was in town for a conference. She is a speaker who often counsels beginning writers about craft and process, and that day we were discussing the finer points of teaching/editing grownups. “It’s all about...
by Jamie Chavez | Jun 6, 2016 | Your Editor Says …
Dear Mr. Author: There are a lot of errors in your manuscript. Not plot holes or lack of clarity, no. Simple things like typos, misspelled words, punctuation mistakes. What happened? It looks like a bomb went off in here. I’m the content editor, so I’ve been looking...
by Jamie Chavez | May 30, 2016 | Your Editor Says …
Some years ago in a weak moment I fell victim to some mediocre book marketing—“follow-up to the international best-selling Pillars of the Earth!”—and purchased Ken Follett’s World Without End, a one thousand–page historical novel. I’d read and enjoyed his early...
by Jamie Chavez | Feb 8, 2016 | The Book Biz, Your Editor Says …
After you and I spend a couple months working on the content of your manuscript—catching some continuity issues or working on characterization, say, in fiction, or beefing up clarity or connecting a few dots in nonfiction—you might well heave a big sigh of relief. You...
by Jamie Chavez | Nov 28, 2015 | Your Editor Says …
This post from Chuck Wendig has—as his posts always do—strong language, so be forewarned. But it also made me laugh out loud, because he compares the editing process to the five stages of grief as posited by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying:...
