Category: Editing
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When Manuscripts Break Trust
Read more: When Manuscripts Break TrustA good editor can tell when an author has struggled to get a passage substantially right. And when an author has run a bit too freely with a turn of phrase or a hastily read bit of supporting evidence. That’s not a mortal sin; we’ve all done it, and we deserve to feel a bit giddy in the midst of what can be a slog. “But what’s this? Alliteration? Yes, dear reader, I aim to inform and delight.” “I wonder if most readers have heard of Schrödinger’s cat. Perfect example of an enduring paradox, though.” Those passages are easy enough…
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My Approach to Editing
Read more: My Approach to EditingThere’s no one way to write a manuscript, and there’s no one way to edit one, either. Before you work with an editor, you should know how they approach their work–and how they see their contributions in the context of your project. These are just my thoughts on the major types of editing, and every editor alive will disagree with one or two things below. As it should be. The Manuscript Editor’s Role Every piece of creative, informative, or persuasive writing has at least a whiff of audacity about it. This thing you’re writing never existed before, and the world…
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AI: The Blade Itself Incites to Deeds of Hackery
Read more: AI: The Blade Itself Incites to Deeds of HackeryWe’re peppered with marketing slop aimed at convincing us that AI is the way forward, that it will inevitably surpass human capabilities, and soon. For the purposes of writing and editing, there is no evidence to support that claim. I expect that there never will be, and that the reasons for that limitation are inherent to AI. I don’t truck with generative AI or LLMs. Not as an editor of manuscripts, not as a writer of blog posts, not as a father of grade-school kids. I’ve encouraged my sons to replace “AI” with “heroin” whenever they encounter it at school.…
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Either/Or
Read more: Either/OrI recently misspelled my mother’s name in my father’s obituary. Had my excuses–it was a rush job and I’d started it on my phone, where my clumsy thumbs got in the way–but I still missed my typo and ended up with a draft that would have told the world that I’d been born to a foodstuff. My brother, who’d asked me to write the thing, caught the error and corrected it before anyone else saw it. Which was another in a lifelong series of reminders that we can write, or we can edit, but we can’t do both at the…