When I talk about the work that I do and mention to people that most of my time is currently taken up working on book-length manuscripts, I often am met with "So do you work on shorter things?" I understand how this could come up if we were talking about writing, because there are certainly different skills involved in writing a 500-word newspaper op-ed or a 50,000-word science fiction novel. I also know that there are editors who have very specific skill sets and specialize in one genre or another. (And, again, they would be looking for different things in short works versus long ones.) So the fact that I edit pieces that are 125,000-word manuscripts, and also 125-word postcard mailers, is
I saw something posted on social media, recently, that asked "If Cinderella's shoe was a perfect fit, why did it fall off?" It's an interesting question in and of itself, but it also got me thinking, once again, about choosing a "perfect" editor (or proofreader, or ghostwriter, or general contractor, or spouse...). What do you do if the one in front of you isn't the one? It's been a while since we talked about choosing to work with someone on your manuscript. In a lot of cases, it's hard to really tell what the person will be like to work with until you're in the middle of the work. This is why working together on a sample chapter or something of that type can be a good place to start. It's
