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My Editing Philosophy

My goal as an editor is not to force my ideas of what makes a good story onto what you have written, but to help clarify your vision and polish your story into the best version of itself. Rather than dealing in terms of right and wrong, I prefer to discuss things in terms of what works and what doesn't. Great literature is full of authors who didn't write how they were supposed to. Above all, my goal as an editor is communication: helping you to translate your thoughts into a form that others can understand.

Developmental Editing

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Two of these developmental letters were written for Ooligan Press acquisitions: Angle, Momentum, Lean and Mr. Fishback's MonsterAngle, Momentum, Lean has since been officially acquired by the press, and will be forthcoming under a different title. While Ooligan is still interested in Mr. Fishback's Monster, the author chose to revise the story to fit a younger age group, and may be looking elsewhere.

 

I edited Conjurer as part of a group project for a class on YA literature. I worked on editing, while my partners worked on marketing and design. The concept behind the story was great, but the narrative had some hiccups. Helping bring that potential out is one of the most exciting parts of developmental editing.

More traditional copyediting examples are included below. The following three samples are from my internship with Portland Book Review. The Portland Book Review had a quick turn-around time, so edits were necessarily light. We also wanted to preserve the style of the reviewers, who were volunteers from all walks of life. While I prefer editing on screen, I am also comfortable editing by hand, as these examples show. Please note that I was not editing format in these examples, as that happened later in the process.

Copyediting​

 

In the spring term of 2015, I interned for an industry newsletter on a marketing project. While there, my supervisor discovered my editing sklls and hired me after my internship for a freelance copyediting project on the novel SeaJourney. The project was challenging, partly because I was supposed to make developmental suggestions as well copyedit, and partly because the company I worked for had a strict and unusual house style. The author was concerned with inconsistencies and slow sections of narrative, so I made sure to keep my eye out for anything that seemed illogical or out of place and suggested cutting words, sentences, and sections that seemed unnecessary.

Proofreading

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While working on the SeaJourney copyedit, I also was managing a design project for the eighth international Mathematics Education and Society conference. The end of the project was proofreading the final designed document and making sure we hadn't missed any formatting or inadvertently introduced any errors. In addition to assigning sections to my team to proofread, I also proofread a large section of the text. A selection of my proofreading notes is shown below.

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