Warning: flashing gif at very end of email. This week, I’m tackling a question from a reader! Jason asks: So, I've heard some agents and editors - maybe even I read it in your email at one time - say that they prefer authors not work with freelance editors before submitting their manuscript on query. Some feel that revision can take away from the author's authentic voice. And so, to be sure they know it's them they're working with, and not really a freelance editor, they want it, obviously, as polished as possible but also raw in a way that it's the author's story and not something that's gone through someone else.
I still do a bit of freelance developmental editing, and while I can mentally grasp this idea that editors distort the writer’s authentic voice, it runs counter to the way I actually approach things, which is to help the best version of the author’s voice come forward. Like you say, making the book more itself—helping writers think through the stories they want to tell, to recognize where they’ve gotten in the way of that story, and clearing the path.
The merry month of May
I still do a bit of freelance developmental editing, and while I can mentally grasp this idea that editors distort the writer’s authentic voice, it runs counter to the way I actually approach things, which is to help the best version of the author’s voice come forward. Like you say, making the book more itself—helping writers think through the stories they want to tell, to recognize where they’ve gotten in the way of that story, and clearing the path.