The last couple of days have been super busy. Busy in a good way. I believe God is, oh dare I say it, finally answering my prayers. The Accept Pregnancy greeting card project is fully under way. I have orders for 11 sets, all printed and ready to go. The slide show for Sunday is ready. Hopefully, I pray it is so, the PayPal account will be available in the very near future. I pray this will be successful and God will bless not the project, but the Pregnancy Center.
My biggest and longest prayer has been for my work. I have been a transcriptionist for over 20 years. Not by choice but by God. Long story but for another time. My passion is writing. Transcription not so much. I do, however, love to read. So, why not be an editor?
What exactly makes a good editor? I've done some research, and as a writer I have come up with a few must haves. An editor/proofreader must first and foremost be honest. After all, a person's written word is very personal. It is our creation, our blood sweat and tears. It is our innermost thoughts and dreams. It is our baby. How difficult it is to hand over your baby to a stranger and ask them to look over it with a microscope! Not only are you asking some stranger to look for spelling and punctuation errors but also grammar and style and ease of reading. The biggest fear, I think, is not that they will hand it back and laugh at you but they will steal your hard work. Therefore, honesty is the most important credential an editor must have.
The second credential I believe is a must for an editor is the desire for the writer to be successful. If an editor does not care, they will not do their best. The editor must want the finished product to be the best it can be just as much as the writer. If a word or phrase does look just right, does not sound just right will the editor stop and take the time to research or will they simply move on because everything is spelled correctly and the sentence is grammatically correct?
An eye for detail is an obvious must as well as knowledge of spelling, grammar and punctuation. A good set of reference books and a working knowledge of Google is a no-brainer.
So what's my point. I strongly believe I fit those credentials listed above. Apparently so do the two author's who have, with great trust, handed over their precious children who sit on my desk waiting for me to finish this blog so I can scrutinize every detail, every comma, every thought and every letter of the alphabet. I will do so honestly, prayerfully, with the thought in mind that their words do not belong to me and then I will hand them back to their rightful owners better than they were when I received them.
Do you have a project, a book, a precious work that you need a second pair of eyes to look over with care?
Thank you, Colleen, for the gentle yet thorough editing of my project. The manuscript is now in the hands of the publisher, and going through the content review phase. Thanks to your skillful eye, I am confident there will be very few alterations required.
ReplyDeleteThe editing process is, indeed, a little like being asked to perform major surgery on one's child without benefit of anesthesia. Thank you for respecting the work, the process and my emotional attachment. Most of all, thanks for being smarter than my Spell Check!
-L A Day
L.A. Day