editing
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Long Story Short
Author Joshua Ferris is about to release his third book, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, and Reagan Arthur, his publisher at Little, Brown, has been with him from the very beginning. After more than 8 years of collaborating, the…
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Life is Short, Read Good Books
The Millions interviews Little, Brown editor Allie Sommer on the ins-and-outs of being an editor. She talks about her pet peeves, editing style, pleasure reading, and how the process of editing a book differs with every new project: “Nobody tells you,…
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The Obsessive, Nerdy Joys of Copyediting
This conversation at the Millions between Edan Lepucki and her copyeditor Susan Bradanini Betz is a beautiful paean to the editing process—and enlightening for anyone who wonders what precisely a copyeditor does. Lepucki and Betz discuss author/editor compatibility, obsessive style…
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The Rumpus Interview with Amy Grace Loyd
Amy Grace Loyd discusses her new book, her career as an editor (including her stint as the Literary Editor of Playboy), the state of publishing in the digital era, and the different hats one must wear when juggling the tasks…
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The Rumpus Interview with Mandy Stadtmiller
Mandy Stadtmiller, writer, comedian, and the deputy editor of xoJane, talks about promoting positivity in women’s journalism, why no one gets hired because of résumés anymore, and the importance of maintaining a writing and editorial staff with differing opinions.
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What Makes a Good Editor?
In a conversation for the Slate Book Review, author Donna Tartt and her editor Michael Pietsch talk through the experience of editing her latest novel from both sides of the red pen. It’s a fascinating insight into the near-magical possibilities of…
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“Typos on the Internet”
Once you train yourself to spot errors, you can’t not spot them….You notice typos in novels, missing words in other magazines, incorrect punctuation on billboards. You have nightmares that your oversight turned Mayor Bloomberg into a “pubic” figure. For The…
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“In Praise of Editors”
All writers should go read every word of this essay by Maria Bustillos, written on the occasion of editor Carrie Frye’s departure from the Awl. The gist of it: your editor is your friend, not some censorious know-it-all trying to…
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Emotionally Grammatical
Yuka Igarashi of Granta wrote an introspective piece on the trappings and fussiness of copyediting. The presence of the unedited, the wrongfully edited, and the misspelled can be infuriating to an editor. Igarashi discusses her fight against the urge to…
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The Rumpus Interview with Halimah Marcus and Benjamin Samuel
Halimah Marcus and Benjamin Samuel, the co-editors of Recommended Reading, discuss the ins and outs of editing an ambitious literary project.
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Copy Editors Are Your Friends
Proper copy editing includes examining the focus, dredging the main point up from the tenth paragraph to make it more prominent. Proper copy editing addresses the language: rooting out cliches, substituting an ordinary term for jargon when it would serve…
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Real Talk from Your Editor
Check out this amazing Tumblr. The Rumpus editorial board is particularly fond of this one: When all of the important national mag awards go to white dudes. (Via Xtina Richards)