THE POWER OF EDITING WORKSHOP

Your manuscript—whether fiction or nonfiction book, short story or magazine article—is done. Your friends and relatives have read it and tell you it’s wonderful. Your Grandma thinks it’s grand, or your kids “just love it.” Unless they are bonafide editors looking for a manuscript to purchase that is likely to earn a profit for their publishing company, chances are they didn’t take note of its strengths and weaknesses—like plot, character development, construction slip-ups, incorrect word usage, grammar errors, proper paragraphing, shifting points of view and typos. An editor would notice these flaws.

      Publishing house editors rarely read past the first paragraph of your manuscript before rejecting it. Consider yourself extremely lucky if your photocopied rejection slip has a line scribbled at the bottom that indicates why they didn’t want it. If you plan to self-publish and market your writing, a professional analysis and critique, along with proofreading and a line-edit, is especially important and can alleviate probable frustration and expense in your quest for a quality, marketable product (not to mention what you might learn about writing).