More about editing: two readers' questions.

Poet and children’s book author Elizabeth Acevedo asks:

If you could go back in time and give one piece of advice to your younger self just starting out as a writer, what would it be?

Ah, the early 80s …

Alle sez:

I would say: get as much help as you can pay for, as soon as you feel you have a draft worth paying to have edited. I spent years and years trying to "fix" my first novel. Later, when I had fifteen hundred dollars to spend on it, I worked with a private editor. I would have saved myself years of submitting and rejections, had I been able to pay for editing earlier.

There was nothing I could do about that; finances are what finances are. But if you have the money and you hesitate to spend in on a great editor: don’t.

A different reader asks:

I see on your resume that in addition to being a published novelist, you have worked as a senior editor as well as section editor for literary magazines. With these skills, do you edit your own writing or do you hire someone else?

Alle sez:

At the very least, I use a critique group. It is very hard to see issues when you are so close to the work- especially issues deeper than typos: real problems with the story and characterization. In my mind, there is a reason hospitals don't let surgeons operate on family members and close friends. Too close.

Read another in the editing conversation.