On Being an Editor

Postnote: I fixed Nathan's link- it had an extra space - duh - **** When I first sat down to write out this blog post, I was totally unsure how to go about saying all the things I wanted to say. I know I want an editor. I know the work that I am tooling out right now is going to need one. I know how hard it is to find a good one, and how difficult it is as a creative person to find a good one and LISTEN to their sage advice. So, I am wandering all about the interwebs looking at this and that, playing on Stumbleupon while I think about this post, and end up on Twitter, and for some strange reason, (God, yes, it was divinely inspired) -- I found my old friend Nathan Bransford's blog. No, we are not friends in the real way, just, I love his blog and used to be a regular reader until my life became a serious dump and I had to go to the mountain and have a come to Jesus meeting with myself. In the interim, I lost touch with it.

Now, Nathan used to be a literary agent, if you don't know him. He was with Curtis Brown for a long time. Now he is an author. And he has great info for me, and you, if you write. If you are a casual follower of this blog, more into mystery than writing, you might want to ignore this post. Otherwise, go to Nathan's blog and read the post entitled Ten Commandments for editing someone's work. It has some really insightful things in it. Things that we all as writers need to remember when we are editing someone's work, and what to remind our editors when they are editing ours. By the way, I think number two is the most critical, FYI. If we cannot see the author's vision (or they see ours) then it is a sure thing that whoever is doing the critique is going to miss a lot of the mark. Maybe the whole tamale. So, go and enjoy reading this awesome post on that blog. Yeah, today, I give you permission to leave Mb4 for greener pastures, but come on back tomorrow. Happy Thursday, Murderers.