Editing is Emphasis

Why are you here?

Why are you here?

Why are you here?

Why are you here?

Editing is emphasis, and I don't know what kind to create unless I know you and what you're trying to do with your work.

And honestly? Neither do you.

I don't mean proofreading or copy editing—the kind of thing that can be done to rules or with a good touch. I mean editing. Choosing the words to say, the order to say them in, the thing that makes us feel like a book is done.

Instead of taking editing projects as they come and hoping I could intuit the meaning (from writers hoping they could intuit the doneness that warrants that kind of edit), I've taken a step back.

Back to the why. Back to you. Back to why we're here in the first place.

Back to the moment of audacity you felt that made you decide you could write a book...before the writing of the book made you rethink everything.

Sometimes we can find that moment again in a thirty minute call, and we part ways (though I'll definitely Google your name months later hoping to see your book available for me to finally get to enjoy).

Sometimes we can dig in over a few hours of discovery-kickoff to uncover (or remember) who you are to the book, who your reader is and where they stand with the topic, what that topic even is, and how we can move that reader through it in a way that feels authentic to you. I'll think of you now and then, or you'll pop up once or twice to update me, and eventually the book emerges. Maybe exactly as we envisioned, maybe as something brand new. But you get there, with me in your corner no matter who else you bring onto the team.

Sometimes we need to keep going, naming together what each chapter needs to look like in order to carry that reader from where they are to where you know they can go.

Sometimes we stick together all the way to the end, at which point we're both so close to the project that we can move in and out of the work with nothing but the ebbs and flows of life in our way.

At any point along the way, I'm happy to see you keep going whether or not that involves me.

I don't have enough time on my calendar to dig in with all of the amazing people who come my way, and not all of you need me sitting that close to your work anyway. This isn't about me selling my work to the highest bidder; it's about getting you exactly what you need to be exactly who you are for exactly the reader who needs you. Nothing more. Nothing less.

When we both know why. you're. here, that's when we get to play.

Welcome to the shoreline. Let's see how far you might decide to wade in.