Waking up to praise… Who doesn’t like hearing good things about their work, especially first thing in the morning. Yesterday, I woke up to find a wonderful testimonial in my Inbox, from a client whose novel I recently edited. Big smiles all day!
I love editing manuscripts – helping other writers by using my decades of knowledge about story and, specifically, how to write them. I enjoy seeing just how much time and angst I can shave off my clients’ lives with every comment I make, every deletion or insertion, every professional flourish.
I also have a natural gift for mimicking narrative voice. This is something I’ve been able to do since I was at high school, and one of the reasons I excelled academically. It means that, once I get stuck into editing a full-length manuscript, I can literally hear the writers’ voice in my head. So any sentences I suggest to the author, automatically align with something they might themselves have written. I’m often quite impressed with myself!
My clients must be too, because they often report back that they accepted 95% of my edits. That’s extremely high! Edits are only suggestions after all.
I will have to add this snippet of praise to the rest of the fabulous testimonials I’m super proud to display on my website over here…
I sent my manuscript to Zena for a copy edit and received back an excellent response in a prompt and professional time frame. Not only had Zena fulfilled everything I’d expected through the copy edit, but she also went above and beyond to comment in ways that helped me develop the manuscript structurally and also made me consider some of the choices I made in other areas, such as story and character. I have found every dealing with Zena to be professional, and I feel that her work has moved my manuscript significantly towards a better standard for submission to agents and publishers.
I’m so pleased for my clients when they either get a publishing contract, if that’s what they want, or self-publish their words to the universe. Here are a few pictures of my clients’ recent releases…
