Stages of Learning How to Edit
As we learn the craft, we go through stages of learning how to edit—I’ve decided there are four stages.
When you’re first learning how to edit, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the learning curve and to wonder when it would be realistic to start charging for your services. The answer is at Stage #3.
4 Stages of Learning How to Edit
- You don’t know what you don’t know. (Unconscious incompetence)
- You know you don’t know stuff. (Conscious incompetence)
- You know stuff. (Conscious competence)
- You do stuff. (Unconscious competence)
If you’re not sure what level you’re at, you’re at level 1.
Or, possibly, level 4.
Tips for Editors & Writers
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How to Read Like an Editor
Book development editors don’t read books the way readers do. To sharpen your developmental editing skills, you need to learn to read like an editor does (instead of the way a reader does). When you’re a reader, you enter the author’s world. You willingly suspend your disbelief in order to experience this world. That doesn’t…
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Story Editing as a Second Career
When I teach developmental editing classes, I get a lot of students transitioning from other careers. They’re often lawyers, social workers, and teachers – though I’ve also taught actors, accountants, and engineers, among others. What they have in common is that they love stories and want to explore whether book editing (story editing/developmental editing) is…
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Getting Started Teaching How-To Classes
If you’re a developmental editor, you’ve probably occasionally thought about teaching a class for writers—perhaps as a means to let people get to know you before they invest in the expense of a full developmental edit or because you want to help them solve some common writing problems before they finish their first draft or…
