10 Edit Jobs that Editors Should Avoid
I can’t tell you how grateful I have been over the last year to the editing and publishing professionals who have been so generous with educating and mentoring new authors like me. As an example, just today I read an article form Lisa Poisso, Editor and Story Coach, called The Author’s Guide to Finding & Hiring an Editor. It was filled with such great advice that I felt moved to reciprocate the gesture.
So, I’m hoping the editing and publishing community will appreciate this list to help them distinguish between a job worthy of their time and expertise and a job they should probably pass along to someone else.
(1) The entire manuscript is written on a three-foot-tall stack of bar napkins.
(2) The author informs you that he must personally drive the manuscript to your house, because aliens from outside our solar system have taken control of our satellites and are monitoring all internet exchanges.
(3) The title of the manuscript is The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: The Pig Latin version.
(4) When you ask the author to tell you about his story, he answers, “I refuse to have my creativity stifled by a plot or characters.”
(5) The initial email from the author begins with, “Hi Im loking for a editer to help me wif my book…”
(6) The author can’t decide if her primary genre is “Non-fiction: Gardening and Horticulture” or “Paranormal Erotica.”
(7) The entire manuscript, a teen-young adult dystopian thriller, is written in cuneiform, as the author believes the writing is making a huge comeback in the Gen Z demographic.
(8) The author is your mom. ‘Nuff said.
(9) The author has exercised her creative license by writing her entire story without prepositions, pronouns, or punctuation, claiming they are not only unnecessary but a hindrance to delivering her message to the world.
(10) After you send your invoice for the initial deposit with both PayPal and credit card options, the author responds with, “Oh, wait. You don’t accept Ethereum?”