My Editing Life

I recently did a guest post for Cynthia Ravinski's blog,  http://cynthiaravinski.com/blog/. She is an amazing author who has published the Emotobook Lingering in the Woods, which I highly recommend. ( http://www.gritcitypublications.com/Grit_City_Publications/LingeringintheWoods.html). Anyway, the post is about my experience as an editor for Grit City Publications. Enjoy!

From a young age, it became clear that editing would be my passion. As early as first grade, I was bored with my spelling tests and my teacher let me create my own lists with harder words. Hey, when everyone else is still learning how to spell “cat” and “pen”, being advanced enough to be learning “alligator” is quite an accomplishment! As time went on, I could always be found with a book in my hand. As my family watched television at night, I would have my nose in a novel and learned to drown out all the background noise, much to my mother’s annoyance at times.

Once I entered middle school, I gained a passion for writing poetry and short stories. In high school, as I started to consider what I wanted to study in college, I didn’t even have to think about it; I knew my future was in English and writing. During my time at the university, I found that I gained a greater feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction from editing the work of my peers than I did in writing my own works. I put more focus into learning the details of proofreading and editing and set my sights on becoming an editor with a publishing company.

Now, six months after graduation, I have spent five months editing for Grit City Publications. As soon as I heard about their revolutionary approach to writing, I knew I had to be a part of it. By combining the best genre fiction (or popular fiction, if you like) with emotionally-packed abstract art, Grit City’s emotobooks present a sensory experience that heightens emotions and helps the reader create a more solid connection with the story unfolding before them. These past few months have been extraordinary, for many reasons.

The best part of working with Grit City is that the editing work presents a challenge. It is certainly a challenge that can be overcome, but it also strengthens my skills as a result. Not only do I have to worry about such physical things as punctuation, spelling, and grammar, but it is important to identify places where the emotions need to be heightened and absorbing. These five or six places in each emotobook have to be built upon in order to support the illustrations that will be created to fit the piece. It is my job to help the author anticipate these insertions and provide the best possible set-up to ensure that the illustrations and writing work together.

Another challenge in creating emotobooks is the specific formatting that must be done before a novel or short story can be considered ready for the public eye. After all of the writing details are nailed down and the perfect illustrations are created, I have to put them together and change the formatting to fit the requirements of each company, from Amazon to Barnes & Noble to Apple. This is a lot to juggle, especially when it gets closer to the deadline (each company publishes on a quarterly schedule), but it reminds me how important it is to multitask.

Overall, editing for Grit City Publications and supporting the emotobooks revolution has been a far different experience than I ever imagined when I decided to become an editor. However, I wouldn’t trade a single moment, because I know it has made me a better professional and has shown me how to work with multiple genres. The unique approach to eBooks that Grit City offers has allowed me to grow as an editor and, for that, I will be forever grateful.