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"There are a number of people without whom I could
not have written this book, but I hope you don't
hold that against them. They are all fine people,
and they had no idea how it would turn out."
- Dave Barry
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Last week I lauded the benefits of working with
an editor.
As I acknowledged, the challenging is finding a
talented and simpatico editor to help polish
your prose.
Here are some examples of academic/editor matches
based on the experiences of my coaching clients:
One academic I work with hired another doctoral
student in English to read her dissertation drafts.
Now this client is a professor in her fourth year of
a tenure track position. She still sends articles
and book chapters to the same editor. As you might
expect, this long-term relationship means that my
coaching client's editor knows the subject matter
extremely well.
Another person I work with shared all his work
with two close friends in his department when he
was in grad school. Now he's in his second year
of a tenure track position and still shares
outlines and drafts with those two friends. In
fact, he telephones one of his friend/peer-editor
overseas to talk through sections or paragraphs
when he gets stuck.
Some doctoral students I've coached have been able
to use campus resources as a free provider
of excellent editing services. And other students
have hired editors who advertised their services
at campus writing centers. One faculty member I
work with found an editor via an internet service.
Recently, a faculty member I work with hired a
former student to edit her work. This was tricky
because my client had to make sure that she would
not have the graduate student in a future class. She
wanted to make sure to in avoid any conflict of
interest. Having an editor has halved the amount of
time it takes this assistant professor to revise and
resubmit articles. Now she doesn't get caught up in
perfectionism because she knows that someone talented
and savvy about the field will be checking over her work.
I've recently discovered a talented editor.
She’s a professor - a sociologist by training and an
editor by temperament,-Alex Howson who specifically
edits the work of academics and graduate students and
has decided to teach adjunct courses instead of a
tenure track job because she likes editing. Because
she has written two academic books and numerous journal
articles while juggling the demands of research and
teaching, she understands the pressures academics are
under to produce timely work that is well written and
that meetsthe exacting criteria for scholarly work.
You can reach her at http://www.thistleeditorial.com.
What about me? Do I have an editor? Of course. Two.
Their names are Liz Brown and Alison Fields and they’re
great. (When you see typos or grammatical errors in my
writing it is because I didn't get my material to
either of them to proofread.)
Do you have an editor?
P.S. If you have found an editor via one of the
editing services advertised on the web, I would
really like to hear about your experience. There
are several services that specialize in editing
dissertations or other academic writing and it
would be very useful to me to know whether any of
the services are competent and useful. Please
email me if you have tried one of these services
and let me know whether your experience was positive
or disappointing.
Thanks so much for helping me help more people!
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