Editing

You need it, I need it, we all need it: editing.

Despite your many rewrites and hours agonizing about word choices, whether you’re a great writer or fledgling, you make spelling and grammar mistakes. Often, your message is lost in a sea of words. Good editing delivers clean copy and elevates the writer’s work.

It’s an important job, but the best editors are not about them, they are about you and the story you are trying to pitch; the press release you’re hoping will stir the public’s attention and earned media; or the content with which you are filling your shiny new website.

Have you buried the lede? Do I want to read more than one sentence or one paragraph? Why would someone bother clicking a link to see anything else on your online platform when the landing page is unfocused and dull?

Electronic text editors don’t catapult writing.

They don’t understand the message the writer is thinking they are delivering, and they lack emotion. I have edited the work of budget analysts who dabbled in block paragraphs and debates about how many decimals were required for clarity. Detailed, technically correct writing, to be sure, but their dry approach – which they rationalized as “academic” – glazed over the important fact they were writing about people.

I write and edit with emotion because most people can relate to items of the heart and head. They want to know what can make their life better and how. They want to know someone feels the same way they do.

I want your readers to feel what you are feeling as much as I want you them to be informed with the new idea you want them to understand and share, or the product you want them to buy and change their lives, their communities. Information without context and impact is boring.

This editor wants to elevate your voice and your idea with your words. How may I help?