Under the Weeping Willow discussion

I once heard an agent say that not only should you hire an editor, you should hire an editor who has experience working for one of the "big 5" publishers. (This is, of course, assuming you want to try to get an agent/traditional publisher.)

We all need to learn to self-edit, but even those of us who can need a skilled set of eyes on our work, because we always miss things. And I don't just mean typos. My late wife used to edit my work. She had good language skills was a voracious reader of everything from classics to contemporary works. So she had a solid background, and had spent decades editing my work (from my college term papers to my novels). She always found things from structural issues to lack of detail to typos. I never felt my work was finished until she'd had her hands on it.

Since her passing, one of my daughters has done my editing. In one of my novels, she pointed out that I had everyone dressed about the same way. I hadn't noticed! Things like that escape us, but our readers will see them. Thus, we need an editor.

I think you should wait to hire an editor if you're still a novice writer. If you have friends who are willing to red-ink your writing, ask them. That's what I'm doing since I'm still a teen (and novice)

Cari wrote: "I think you should wait to hire an editor if you're still a novice writer. If you have friends who are willing to red-ink your writing, ask them. That's what I'm doing since I'm still a teen (and n..."

I may have missed this when it was posted. You are correct: professional editors don't work for cheap (and if they do, they probably aren't very good!). If you plan to publish, it's worth it. If you are just writing mostly for yourself, your family, your friends, you don't need to incur the expense.