Test your professional editor.
At some point, all writers should hire an editor who will
help strengthen their work. However, the first thing you need to know about
professional editors is that the word “professional” simply means they are paid
to edit. It doesn’t mean they’re good. If you handed your manuscript to my ten-year-old
son and paid him enough to buy his next Lego set, he would indeed be a
“professional editor.”
I’ve learned the hard way that not all editors are created
equally. Some are brilliant at finding grammatical errors and nothing more. Others
can help you with pacing while missing split infinitives left and right. An
editor can impress you after finding fifty-six errors in your first chapter, leaving
the other twenty-two errors for your readers to find.
Believe me. Finding a competent editor isn’t as easy as
searching for the most expensive out there. (That would actually be silly.) The
best way to know what you’re getting in an editor is to test him or her. Write
a two- or three-page piece for them to edit before hiring them. Make sure that
you plant errors throughout, and try not to make them obvious. If you know the
kinds of errors you make, it’s a must that you plant quite a few of those. One
of my demons is homonyms. Eye can’t seam two fine them, sew I make sure that I
due plant sum inn my “test peace.” Have a character chugging down a Budweiser
on page one, then switch it to a Heineken by page three. Whatever you can think
of to trip them up.
If an editor refuses to be tested, thank her for her time
and move on. And whatever you do, do NOT agree to pay an editor by the hour
(unless you can agree how many hours the project will take.) Otherwise, paying
according to the page-count is the way to go, and if your work is clean enough
for them, they may cut you some slack on pricing (but don’t count on it). In
fact, don’t be surprised if an editor charges you more than the usual rate due
to how sloppy your manuscript may be. After all, not all four-hundred-page
manuscripts are created equally, either.
