Learning how to become an editor doesn’t happen overnight. Editing isn’t a college major. Some English degree programs offer a specialization in editing and publishing, most do not. There are a handful of certificate programs in professional and graduate degree programs, but the art of editing goes far beyond knowing grammar and the basics of copyediting. A full-time job as an editor isn’t an entry-level position and many recent graduates who might one day become editors have a difficult time navigating a route to this career goal. Many publishers won’t hire someone full-time who hasn’t already had an internship or two. And while they offer internships, typically they are unpaid and sometimes require a student register for college course credit. Instead of getting paid to work, they pay several thousands of dollars in tuition to gain valuable work experience. As a former college professor who supervised some of these internships, I would be disheartened to learn students had been given low-level tasks to perform which did not increase their skill sets or worse, had them perform tasks which the company ought to have hired an employee to do. Too often, interns provided an unpaid labor pool instead of an apprenticeship. Cultivating the next generation of editors requires mentors who can offer educational opportunities within a workplace setting. Instead of treating an intern as unpaid labor, cultivating their strengths and working on building new skill sets takes time and effort that goes beyond the regular work demands of running a business.…

Should I write or should I read a book? When I am short on time it’s easy to read a few pages on the bus, in the waiting room, or even in the bath. The number of pages accumulate quickly even though I only have time to read books in short bursts on most days. This is also true for writing. I grab every opportunity to write long-hand in my composition notebook. Red lights in traffic while listening to the car radio. Cup of Piccolo Mondo coffee between appointments in Ithaca. Waiting to get the oil changed at Diane’s Downtown Automotive. Mulling over breakfast at the State Street Diner. I seize ten minutes and write. My best reading is done on weekends and over holidays and vacations when I can spend uninterrupted time with a book in my hands. Summer is the best and August an orgy of reading. Yet I map writing onto every stretch of my unscheduled time. Do you book your marathon writing sessions in sync with school calendars or around the religious or federal holidays? I’m headed to Two Harbors next week for a writing retreat along the shores of Lake Superior. When I think about doing the work of an author, I often feel like I should be writing and deny my reading pleasures. Don’t you? “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that,” Stephen King wrote in his memoir, On Writing.…

Hi. I’m Jill and I’m an editor. I enable writers. I mainline books like a junkie. I free base text into prose. I’m always jonesing for a good story. Yes, I’m hooked on grammar. I get a tremendous high when one of my writer’s books gets a starred review in Kirkus, featured in the New York Times or pops up as a question on Jeopardy. What a rush. Almost eight years ago I invented this job as a free-lance developmental book editor right at the time when publishers downsized editorial staff and expected authors to hire their own editors. One of the rewards of my job is learning new things from my writers. Did you know on Mars the duration of a solar day is called a “sol” and takes 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds? I didn’t. Who knew that Confederate soldiers burned the town and sacked the banks in St. Albans, Vermont? Not me. Or letters found in an antique shop in Stillwater, Minnesota, were written by a French catholic metalworker the Nazis conscripted to work in a Daimler factory? Writers come to me looking for a midwife to help them give birth to their books. If they’ve got a compelling story, I’ll help turn a good idea into a great book. But that’s not always possible. The most difficult part of my job is when I have to deliver bad news. No, your manuscript is not ready for publication. Hey, doctors sometimes have to tell a…