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?
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.
So true. Even after being an editor for over 25 years, and editing dozens of memoirs, I would not edit my own. Lucily, my publisher paired me with a great editor; she helped me so much.