Becoming a Writer-Editor
How can someone effectively combine writing and editing skills to make a good living? By establishing what I call a “hyphenated career”: becoming a writer-editor!
Combine Writing and Editing Skills
In my book The Business of Storytelling, I talk about how to create a writer-editor career, where you use what you learn as a writer to reinforce the editing side of your career and vice versa.
For those of us who enjoy taking on a variety of projects in our work, a hyphenated career can be a source of fulfillment and growth (both personal and career-related). I’ve always said I’m a better editor because I’m a writer, and I’m a better writer because I’m an editor.
The other day, a reader contacted me and said she was a different kind of hyphen: a bookseller-writer. I loved that! Her deep understanding of what readers enjoy reading makes her a better writer, and her understanding of writing and literature makes her a better bookseller.
A friend of mine is a great beta reader/big-picture editor because she’s also a visual artist (“Even painters info-dump,” she says.) I love the idea of there being all kinds of hyphenated careers possible for writers and editors.
In the end, it’s the interplay between your skills that can help you earn more money both as a writer and as an editor.
Tips for Editors & Writers
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Accountability to Your Future Self
While I love being a freelancer, there are certain tasks that I don’t enjoy doing. For example, marketing. Or updating my website. I know I need to do them, but sometimes my motivation is lacking. It’s easy to keep kicking that can down the road: “I’ll do it later.” One way I get around this
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Redefining Success as a Freelance Editor
When I was living in Málaga, after more than a year of working hard to learn Spanish, I still didn’t understand a lot of what I overheard around me. This used to discourage me. I felt like I should be a lot further along, given the effort. Then one day I asked myself, “Is my
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What Kind of Work Can Editors Do?
If you’re interested in becoming an editor, you may wonder what kind of work editors can do other than editing the words on a page. Or you may worry that being an editor would constrain you to only a certain kind of work: developing book manuscripts or copyediting journal articles. But once you have grown
