What's the Difference between a Professional Editor and a Perfectionist?

An editor and an inner critic are not the same thing. One will move you forward and the other will hold you back.

Luckily for us, history has shown that mankind does not find balance by automatically being perfect in the first place. We find balance by making smaller and smaller errors on each side of an equation. Like a pendulum.

I’ve always admired how this works in economics, the rise and fall of civilizations, home cooking, and biochemistry, so I started applying it to my writing practice too. It’s a lot about going to far in one direction and pulling it back, then going too far in another direction and pulling it back.

Sometimes I’m yuckin’ it up like an overtired preteen at a slumber party, then in another paragraph I’ve become so philosophical that it reads like dry pound cake. You can hardly chew it.

However, that’s fine. Better even, because the pearls of your unique style only emerge when you go too far. This is the beauty of the editing process, it gives you the freedom to be too crazy, too sentimental, too dramatic, too bitchy, too abstract, too metaphorical in the first draft. Then read through it objectively and ask, what am I trying to accomplish with this paragraph? What best serves the message?

A professional editor asks, "How can we make this a better experience for the reader?" The inner critic is focused on the writer; it’s worried and self-conscious. Developing your editing skills can fend off that inner critic because it takes your attention off of yourself and puts it on the communication taking place.

When I work with people, I coach them through the developmental and copy edit, so they go straight to the proofread.

To get a better idea of where you’re at with your manuscript, let’s take a look at the three different levels.

Developmental Edit

The editor may move around the structure, sections and chapters to look at the underlying literary elements. Comments and changes go deep, take time, and might involve several drafts. These are the same issues we take on in author coaching, which allows you to learn while you're still writing the manuscript, rather than having to go back and deal with everything from scratch after you’ve finished.

Copy Edit

This happens when you're secure about the structure and you want to refine your voice. Editors do extensive paragraph and line edits, helping not only with the grammar, but also style. This is the art of being more persuasive, more literary, or simply more fluid with your words. Finding your voice is a sensitive issue, so be sure that clear expectations are established between yourself and your editor.

Proofread

Honestly, as my clients grow in confidence, I like to send them straight to the proofread. This covers all the details of the grammar. This is where the distinctions are made between different kinds of English, depending on the country. I always recommend a proofread, because there are so many intricacies to have in place.

The more you grow as a writer, the more your own craft grows at every level. That initial question, “Is it good enough?” doesn’t have a simple answer. As long as you keep learning with every book you write, I believe that any goal is attainable.