The Craft of Self-Editing with Tiffany Yates Martin

How can you balance the analytical act of editing with the creative act of writing? 

I spend a lot of time thinking about editing and considering the best ways to take a draft and turn it into something publishable. 

That's probably because I spend some of the working days editing the work of other writers and because I've worked as a sub-editor for several newspapers over the years. 

I learned from editors far more talented than I am about how to take an early draft and turn it into something you can publish in a professional publication. 

This week, I caught up with a talented developmental editor. Her name is Tiffany Yates Martin. She runs FoxPrint Editorial and is also the author of Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing.

Tiffany has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, to name a few.

In the interview, I explained to Tiffany how I currently approach editing or self-editing first drafts of manuscripts and narrative nonfiction. She gave me a few practical tips to help me improve next time.

We also discussed how to separate every editor's analytical approach. As an editor, it's your job to figure out what to take out, what to clarify, what to condense, what to improve on, and how to balance all of that with the creative act of writing.

I started to explain how I sometimes consider using a template like Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet or the three-act structure when preparing a manuscript to write. Tiffany offered a different approach that could help me embrace the creative act of writing with the analytical act of editing.

In this episode, we discuss: 

• The craft of self-editing
• The importance of soliciting feedback
• The best ways to get feedback from other readers

Resources:

Visit Tiffany at:
www.foxprinteditorial.com
or
www.phoebefoxauthor.com

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Thanks for listening!