Wise and Beautiful Editors Who Say YES!

Yes is an awesome word!
Of course editors who say yes, often say it with a few more words like, "we would like to include your story/poem _ in our upcoming anthology/magazine." Those are very beautiful words for a writer to read.

So, what else is there to say? Yes is self explanatory, right?

Well . . .usually I've found that "Yes" from an editorial team usually comes with qualifiers like, "we would like to publish your work, however we would like you to make the following changes . . ."

Editors, as I hinted at in my last post "Wise and Beautiful Editors Who Say No?", are the managers of quality control for their publications. They want to have every line of a poem, every word in a story, and every page in a book be just right. They keep us from embarassing ourselves with misplaced commas, and ask us to replace awkward wordings with vibrant ones.

On three occassions I've had editors say yes without qualifiers, and all three times I regretted not having more feedback when I saw the finished product in print.

Editing can bring a piece of writing from ok to awesome.

What kind of experience have you had with editors and editing?

100 Days of Revision Update, Day 31
In the last thirty days I haven't hit my revision goals on a daily basis, but for the month I'm exactly where I want to be, just under the halfway mark through my novel. I have much, much more work to do just on my own, and then I'll read it aloud and go through it again before August 10th.

My youngest daughter, age 10 (soon 11), has been an invaluable asset. I think she may be an editor in training. She's very good at finding errors in my writing, and even in books she reads that have been published. Have a typo? She'll find it. Have a character doing something out of character? She'll point it out. The last few days during our state testing (a requirement for homeschoolers in our state), she lamented that the reading comprehension, vocabulary, and spelling tests were all way too easy. I know this all sounds like an incredible brag, so just to keep me humble, she hated the math section all the way through . . .we probably need to lessen our reading time and up our math time at home.

My oldest daughter also thought reading comprehension was easy, but felt suprised that she thought the science section too simple . . .she wondered how anyone could not know which birds are more likely to eat nectar out of a list that included parrots, robins and hummingbirds. She has no interest in editing, but she wants to create a video game for my book when it's finished.

So, my revision is going good so far, and my kids rock!