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Poetry as an Editing Niche

By Editorsjourney | 3 June, 20 | Comments 0 Comment

A few months ago, I talked about exploring and Finding your Niche in the editing world. One of those very niches that I stumbled into was editing for Poetry.

Poetry is a unique form of writing. With that incredible depth and variety comes a world of different types of editing required to produce and publish poetry successfully. Editing poetry means that you must have such a technical understanding of language and words and how to manipulate them. You need to know when to ignore all the rules. Embrace the intent of the poem and poet.

Whereas some poems have precise rules that the poet follows, other free verse poetry can ignore the rules. Often, the poets are encouraged to step as far away from them as they can. The trick here for an editor is that you can find a blend of structured, free verse, and avant-garde poems in a single book. The question, then, is how one customizes the edit to the poetry in the book.

As a poet myself, I admit that I am one of “those poets” who bounces around between genres and styles. I don’t limit myself, and for the most part, that is a strength in my life as a poet. As an editor of poetry and poetry books, I approach the relationship between myself, the editor, and my client, as a partnership. This editor/author partnership is even more true for editing poetry than other manuscripts.

To serve your client well as their editor, you must get to know them, learn from them what they want with the book. This understanding of continuity and message is not much different from what you need for any manuscript you are editing. With a book of poetry or even a poem, however, you need to understand the overall picture and each poem. Most poetry books contain somewhere between 25-60 poems. Often part of my job is to let my client know if things flow well, if the poems all fit together, and sometimes, even to help them figure out what a theme might be for them (depending upon the stage of the manuscript when I see it.)

You also need to take each poem and look at it critically to decide just how much of it you will hold to standard grammar rules. Poetry can often be perfection WITHOUT punctuation or with limited punctuation. You could easily have several poems that have no punctuation, or like E. E. Cummings, be all lowercase, and then in other poems in the same book, you’ll have poems asking to Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

When working on poetry, you must understand what the poet is trying to achieve. I find I talk more to my Poetry clients even more than I do to my Academic clients. Each experience that I have with a client is gratifying because of this.

Also, poets do prefer to have someone well versed in poetry editing their manuscripts. If you think about it, though, that’s not as strange as it seems. Academics want people to edit their work with experience in their field or with the Style Guide they use. Just so, poets need to know that the person editing their manuscripts understands the world in which they live. There is an impermanence to poetry, and that magic sometimes needs the rules to bend.

Are you a poet? Have you ever had someone edit your poetry? What are some of the things you experience?

Galen

The editing/author partnership

By Editorsjourney | 13 March, 20 | Comments 0 Comment

I enjoy editing, but what I love most is the potential each experience has to develop into a long-term relationship that can last for years. Working with an Author long-term can be an incredible ride where you both share in the process and create a give-and-take relationship.

Years ago, I stumbled across one of my dearest friends Rickey via an e-mail fan group. We connected with our love of writing; we read each other’s work and gave gentle critiques. Over time, she decided to retire from her “day job” and try her dream job writing for a living.

Our partnership started out as writing partners, slowly putting together a series of books while I worked 40+ hours and she tried to figure out the publishing world. It grew rather organically to my reading her manuscripts for fun, and eventually, our ‘mutual admiration society of two became an editor/author relationship.

Today, she writes as Mallory Kane and has published over 30 books in the last decade and a half. Most of what I do for her now are Developmental Edits. She is one of those lucky few who just don’t need that much in the way of copy-edits.

What working with her has taught me, however, is that when you work together as long as we have your relationship, the partnership that you build often resembles a marriage. There is a level of trust and communication vital for a long-term editor/author partnership to succeed.

I live by real-world examples, so here is one:

In 2005, Mallory sent me a manuscript she was working on for Harlequin Intrigue. It was giving her some trouble and needed both a developmental and copy edit. I had looked at and edited at least half a dozen books for her already, and at most, I would fix a few grammar issues and sometimes suggest she add a prologue.

This book presented a more complicated issue and one that I thought would preclude it from being published. How in the world do you tell a fellow writer that they can’t publish the book as it is? I won’t go into details as for this discussion, they are unnecessary, but as an authentic myself, I will own that we ALL have these moments, scenes where our great idea just doesn’t work. The benefit of having someone do a developmental edit when this happens is that a good editor will not only point out the issues but give solid suggestions on how to fix them.

I know that I spent hours writing up solutions for Mallory. The phone call to her was so hard, probably more difficult because we are so close. Working with a complete stranger can be less traumatic, but my rule of life is to treat even strangers with respect and compassion and understand that they are trusting you with parts of their heart and soul. Be supportive and understanding yet firm, and remind the author that you want them to succeed. You are there to help make that happen.

I have often likened my relationship with Mallory as not just a friendship but something akin to marriage (a successful one) because of the level of trust we have developed with each other and how hard we have worked over the years to communicate with each other.

I hope if you are an author or editor reading this that you someday get to experience the wonderful partnership with someone like I have with Mallory.

Oh, and after setting the book aside for about 5 months, Mallory finished the book. It became one of my favorites that she wrote for Harlequin Intrigue– A Father’s Sacrifice.

She nailed it.

— Galen

You can find many of Mallory’s books via her website or her page on Amazon.

“I have had the pleasure of working with Galen Scott on various projects over the past 20 years. During that time, Ms. Scott has line- and copy-edited numerous fiction and non-fiction manuscripts, edited personal and business correspondence and handled website creation and maintenance for me. I have found her to be consistently accurate, knowledgeable, comprehensive and professional. In addition to those skills, it has been my experience that Ms. Scott is the single best continuity editor I have worked with in the field of fiction.”
–Mallory Kane, Multi-award-winning, internationally best-selling author of more than 50 novels.

Finding your niche as an editor

By Editorsjourney | 23 February, 19 | Comments 0 Comment

Over the years, I have often been asked, “what sort of things do you edit”? When I first started, in my complete naiveté, I found this puzzling. I’m an editor; I edit everything.

Through trial and much error (we call it a learning curve), I discovered that this is the wrong answer to the question. I can edit anything you throw at me; years of experience make that relatively easy, but I have preferences and areas that I’m particularly good at editing.

You can be a natural at spotting grammar mistakes and run-on sentences. You can even have a natural talent for reading something and being able to intuit what is missing or what might tighten up a scene. However, that is your base talent; that’s what drives you and what helps you push forward, and, yes, that instinct enables you to find your niche.

Because editing is a honed skill, there are usually genres at which you are particularly adept. I, for example, am very skilled at editing academics papers because of my academic background and familiarity with a wide range of style guides and disciplines. I am adept and skilled at doing Developmental Edits of Fiction.

A better answer to the question of “what do you edit” can in part be found in restating the question. “What do you prefer to edit” or “what is your area of expertise in editing” are the more informative questions to ask. And if talking editor to editor, “what is your niche?” and how do you find it?

In an earlier post, The Beginning of the Blog, I briefly talked about how I grew up in the Academic world. If a particular discipline surrounds you, that does tend to steer you in a specific direction. What you learn along the way is that it is crucial to dabble in other areas, maybe areas that you are not as comfortable with or haven’t experienced. Or, if, like me, you are a writer, you will find that you can become proficient in the areas you write. That said, some people cannot edit their genre, so if that’s you, you’re neither alone nor a rarity.

What we, as editors, must do as we explore our chosen career and try to decide what our specialty or niche is, is accept that we cannot be the best at everything and understand that having a niche can be a great benefit. Knowing what you are most passionate about and your area of expertise can open up doors for your business as a freelancer. It also can help you hone your skills in ways you never imagined.

My personal example is that while I specialize in academic editing and fiction (specifically Romantic Suspense), and you could easily call either of those my niche market, an area that I’m focused on is Poetry.

Poetry? That’s a niche, a specialized skill?

Why, yes, it is, and a surprise to me, too. (That journey will be another blog post, I am sure.)

So, for me, I actively seek out poetry manuscripts to edit. As a poet myself, I know that there is a particular skill to be able to edit poetry and RESISTING over editing it. The Poet’s voice can be more important than whether or not you used proper punctuation. My favorite example of why editing can be a very different experience when editing a poet is to suggest you read a few of his poems (https://hellopoetry.com/e-e-cummings/). Yes, there is structure; yes, he does stick to most grammar rules, but not always.

Sometimes, with poetry, the rhythm is more important than whether or not you use a period at the end of the sentence.

I have a fellow editor friend who specialized in children’s books for kids between 5 and 7. She enjoys working in a narrow field and loves what she does. She finds working on this limited genre best serves the publishing community. Other editors specialize in Technical Editing/Writing.

In our way, each of us picked Freelance Editing as a career and had something we preferred to edit, just as authors have a genre preference. Yes, you will find that you will edit outside this desired niche or your specialty. For the most part, once you are truly up and running, you can fuel your job as a Freelance Editor with your chosen niche and enjoy the process with all the passion you have for that area of expertise.

And that’s enough on that subject. Have a fantastic day!

Galen

An Editor’s Journey