In this land of self-publishing successes and DiY bootstrapping, why would you ever hire someone like me? I'm a professional developmental editor. I help writers see the forest for the trees all the while keeping a thumb on details and plot arcs.
Not every writer needs to hire a professional editor. If you have reached a certain skill level and have a pocketful of professional writer-friends who aren't afraid to point out the flabby bits in your latest work (meaning that they're looking to help you, not to hurt or to say nyah-nyah), then you probably don't need a pro.
But even writers who have had published works have a few things to say on this. Michele Scott is a mystery writer with several books to her name. She blogged about just this thing:
About six months ago, I made the decision to upload two thrillers that I had written over five years ago onto Kindle, Daddy’s Home and Mommy, May I? I had a couple of friends read through them for mistakes (general typos, grammar, and content). Now first off, I know better than that. Family and friends are not the people you want proofing your work. BAD idea. Why? Well, it isn’t because they aren’t smart. It’s because they love you, and they aren’t looking at your work with an eagle eye. They are reading it and loving it because it’s yours. In this case mine. I also went that route because cash was tight and hiring an editor and proof reader is not cheap. However, in retrospect I would have been better saving up some extra cash and investing in my career.
They sold fantastically well, something Michele had not anticipated. Good reviews topped the list. And then the bad ones started to take over.
“This book was full of errors, not just typos but grammatical and careless mistakes. Did it get proof-read at all? The subject sounded interesting, but the really dreadful standard of writing made the book, for me, impossible to read. I abandoned it half way through. I assume this was self published, but this sort of badly put together rubbish gives self publishing a bad name and does no favours to the many excellent self published books. If you can’t write then please don’t.”
Michele goes on to say:
I got pissed off at myself and realized I needed to do the work that I had not done before. I needed to pay an editor, get a copy editor, and do the extra work.
I know writers live and breathe their work--no writer wants to put out a shoddy novel. And yes, you can self-edit your work, but it's taking off the creative hat and putting on the non-creative hat (which you might spin around to be the business hat. Hey, no one said writing wasn't fashion forward). Stepping away from the creative side of things is not going to be easy for everyone. Sure, you can catch typos and really obvious flat dialog or overwrought descriptions.
But can you see why your scene isn't going anywhere? Do you know how to move your characters along without losing tension or how to bump up that energy in the ho-hum scene? How about setting up your ending--ever write yourself into a corner and felt you had to scrap the whole chapter? What if your entire book's middle feels like Groundhog Day (same thing, different setting)?
If you struggle with answering those kinds of questions after the book has been done--you've stared at the chapter and can't think of a way to fix it (maybe you've rewritten the same darn thing over and over again) but you know just enough to know it's not working...
You might want to hire a professional editor.
You can always hire an editor to do a light edit, proof read, or copy edit if you're satisfied with the overall story. No one said you had to hire someone like me who gets in under the hood and starts reassembling the chasis (Now there's your problem!). You might need someone just to help you refine your work. Or someone just to catch those details you always gloss over (the brain, it's tricksy)--it's not your fault; for months, you made a minor character blonde, but then changed it once you reached your ending. She's not so important she stands out, but your brain sees "blonde" and says, "that's right" even when you made the executive decision to alter it. An editor will catch it without being hampered by a brain that says, "Oops, sorry, the memo got stuck under the margharita pitcher. Heheh."
This doesn't mean you're handing over your work to someone else to alter. A good editor will guide, offer advice for changes, and then lets you decide which way to do it (clearly, I'm not talking about a proof reader or copy editor who is definitely there to make sure your homonyms are in the right places). It's your style, your voice, your creation. If the editor is always changing your lines and then putting it into print, how will you ever grow as a writer? You don't--you become a slacker because your editor is doing the alterations. You just keep writing at the same level and handing it off to the editor to polish. Don't do this.
Really, the only way to know if you need an editor is to either hire one and see if it helps you or don't and self-publish a digital copy or go the traditional route (agent search, print publisher search) without one. But I think you probably already know.
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