Contributor: Sally Jane Smith

This article is Part 2 of a three-part series on tackling a professional line edit. Read Part 1 here, and Part 3 here.

Here’s the Link to Part 1 in this article series.

Finding My Editor

I’d come to terms with needing an editor, despite a glimpse at professional fees making my eyes water.

But, how to find one?

Of all the difficult decisions I’d made on my writing journey, selecting an editor could be the most crucial. She had to be a good fit. She had to have experience in my genre. Most importantly, she had to be an avid reader who would pick my story off a shelf because it intrigued her.

Weighing the Costs: Money and More

Price would be a factor, of course. I had dropped to part-time hours in my paying job to dedicate the additional days off to writing. My disposable income was far from abundant, and I tried to save every spare cent to fund my ferocious travel habit.

I needed to conserve my emotional resources, though, with as much care as I did my financial ones. I couldn’t afford to hand over my manuscript to a bargain-basement editor who might let me down.

As a budding creative myself, I also wanted to pay a fair wage for the labour involved.

The Why: Understanding my Motivation

That meant I’d be pouring a significant amount of money – more than my annual travel budget, in a good year! – into a product that might not recoup that investment. After all, there was no guarantee that a traditional publisher would pluck Just One Step: Travels in Greece and the World from the slush pile. Or that I would have any talent for marketing or distribution if I were to publish independently.

So what was my reason for this substantial outlay?

The answer was that I had a driving passion to tell a compelling story. Not just to document it; I’d already done that. My tale has a craving to be told, to reach readers, to touch them. I was investing in the power of my words and my development as a writer, not trading off current cash for future profits.

The Considerations: Financial and Demographic

I could only afford one overhaul, so I had to choose wisely.

Someone more affluent could go through a structural appraisal, a couple of rounds of line edits and a copy edit, before handing their work over to a proofreader. I would have to rely on a single service – and hit up my long-suffering sisters to pick up any typos my former-English-teacher eyes missed. So I needed a multi-skilled expert who could bring both a broad view and a narrow eye for detail to the task.

The middle road was the way to go. A discerning line editor, while neither a structural specialist nor a grammatical technician, would raise any issues she noticed in both these fields as she scrutinised every phrase.

Gender didn’t matter, although it would turn out I’d be entrusting my words to a woman, but nationality did.

Despite living in Australia, I wanted to hire an American. I hadn’t made the final decision of whether I would pitch to agents in my adoptive country, with the original narrative crafted for an Aussie audience, or whether I’d self-publish with U.S.A. spelling and language conventions. If my editor identified stumbling blocks for a United States readership, I could highlight those suggestions now, making it an easy task later to revise my manuscript for release in the U.S.A.

Finding my Editor

It took months before a lucky coincidence guided me to my editor’s door.

I’ve signed up to a bunch of writing newsletters. Some, I seldom open. I scan their subject lines before deleting them or filing them away for maybe-someday-maybe-never future reference. Others, I peruse with care as soon as they hit my inbox.

One of the latter comes from “Natasa @ NY Book Editors” and overflows with tips on drafting, pitching, publishing and marketing. One edition might examine cover design, another the creation of an incisive query letter, still another the different levels of editing or how to put together an author website.

I hadn’t thought of New York Book Editors as anything more than the source of a useful freebie, until one day Natasa herself appeared on a podcast to which I subscribe (and which I also recommend): IngramSpark’s Go Publish Yourself.

A Polished Gem is the Product of More than One Mind

When I’d plugged in my earphones at the start of my commute, I was still conflicted about whether it was appropriate to undergo an edit before querying. It felt like cheating.

By the time I’d arrived at my workplace, I was convinced. Natasa had persuaded me that it takes more than one mind to create anything better than a mediocre book, and that the most accomplished writers in the world work in tandem with an editing professional.

Any book I’d ever closed, at its end, with a sense of awe or even happy satisfaction, would have been polished by a skilled editor. The author might be the one who delves the earth for that diamond, decides on its cut and grinds its facets, but it is the editor who shines it till it sparkles.

New York Book Editors also offered a solution to my problem of finding someone with expertise in my genre and a genuine interest in my story. With a stable of talent at their fingertips, they would recommend a good fit for my work, as well as the option of a trial run for me to be confident in their matchmaking abilities.

And they’d hold my hand, ensuring I understood what was happening every step of the way. Dan, whose job title isn’t actually “hand-holder” but whose encouragement and support were unflagging, may be the company’s biggest asset.

Part 3 of this article series: The Pain and the Glory

About Sally Jane Smith

Sally Jane Smith was injured when the bus on which she was travelling through Sri Lanka suffered a head-on collision. A decade on, she journeyed to Greece in a quest to recover her wanderlust – and proved it is possible for an out-of-shape, middle-aged, female traveller on a budget, armed only with a guidebook and her mother’s 1978 travel diary, to take that single step away from the mass tourism track and experience a remarkable adventure.

Connect with Sally Jane:

• On Facebook: @JustOneStepGreece
• On Twitter: @Just1StepGreece
• On Goodreads: @sally-jane-smith
• On her website: www.justonestepgreece.wordpress.com