If you don't work in publishing/writing, what do you think of when I say I'm editing my book? Like, what sort of task do you think I'm doing? Curious what the default understanding of editing is (and what it might map onto in practice)
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Broadly, I would think your job is to work with the author to ensure their vision of a book is translated well to the largest audience as possible.
That can sometimes mean leaving potions on the cutting room floor, while drawing out great detail and richer writing.
This impression was gleaned from listening to Robert Caro discuss his partnership with his editor while being interviewed on 99% Invisible's series on The Power Broker.
An amazing book might I add!
Moving things around, constantly fiddling with small points of language and grammar, finding you've used the same word too often, staring at the screen until your forehead bleeds.
Mug of tea and a big red pen. Many hours and days and rereads and angry crossing out. It’s editing circa 1965 as it’s more romantic in my whimsy imaginings. The 2025 version is on a laptop doing the same while trying to ignore the American apocalypse in your news pings on your phone.
I don't work in writing or publishing but I've edited a book for a self-published friend. It was mostly a case of finding typos and words that were repeated too much, suggesting different sentence structures, crossing out superfluous details etc.
I think you are going through the book (and I think you will do this several times) to re write certain parts to make things clearer, skip things you think don't add anything to the story. Something like that?
the phase of implementing editor feedback or the phase where you're preparing your text for someone to provide feedback. the frustrating, boring, dizzying, repetitive work of tying up loose ends and going back and forth on whether that comma should be there or be a semicolon or aargh fuck this shit.
I’d imagine it’s checking for things that don’t make sense, rewriting sentences or paragraphs that you can improve on, possibly even redrafting bigger sections if needed? Cutting down word count perhaps? I guess I’m basing it on how I edit eg proposal docs.
I was contacted by a wannabe author last year who seemed, quite seriously, to think that authors simply come up with the basic idea and then our agents and editors take the idea and knock it into something shaped like a book.
Or that authors transcribe the suggestions made by editors and agents, sort of like stenographers. Because the sentences are all just scattered around and need only basic assembly.
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That can sometimes mean leaving potions on the cutting room floor, while drawing out great detail and richer writing.
An amazing book might I add!
Not like a proper editor would do, I imagine!
he said, answering questions on Bluesky to avoid editing.
I imagine there's also a lot of agonising over commas.
But that's nitty-gritty stuff, you're probably also looking at pacing & structure, and are there any leaps of illogic.