Why You Need a Writer AND an Editor
Editing. Writing. Same thing, right?
Nooooooo!
If you’re considering having someone help you put together a book, you will need to hire BOTH a writer AND an editor. As this video explains, the skills they bring to the project are different, and you need to tap both to get the best final draft possible.
[Transcript summary]
Hello, everybody. Wanda Thibodeaux of takingdictation.com here, and I’m here to talk to you today about editing versus writing.
Now, you might have a book project that you are very excited about, and you have maybe hired a writer. Maybe you even have the manuscript. But then that they tell you hire an editor. Why do they do that? If you’ve already got the writer, why do you need the editor? Because when you have a writer, that is a very different skill than editing. Writing is very much about the creative aspects, getting things to connect and flow, very imaginative. Editing is so much more about the detail orientation of things. You’re catching mistakes. You’re making sure that everything, you know, follows the logistics, formatting, all of those kinds of things. And those are two very different areas to work in.
Now, that is not to say that there aren’t some wonderful people out there who can be great writers and great editors. But generally speaking, you always want to hire an editor afterward anyway, simply because when you’ve been on a writing project as the writer, they’re going to be so familiar with that project by the time that they’re done that they’re just going to miss things. Looking at the manuscript over and over again, their brains are just not going to see it. So, that’s where the editor comes in. And you can work with them to say, “Are there things that stand out to you? How can we really polish this?” That’s what the editing is really about, is polishing what the writer has done. Now, hopefully, if the writer’s done a good job, there won’t be a ton to fix, but that’s the editor’s job.
So, if somebody tells you you need both, you need both.
Take care, everybody. Bye.