{"id":13853,"date":"2025-06-09T09:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T16:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=13853"},"modified":"2025-06-09T09:11:39","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T16:11:39","slug":"what-a-good-editor-can-do-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/what-a-good-editor-can-do-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"What a good editor can do for you"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Thoughts from Elizabeth Austin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cA good editor gives feedback that feels less like judgment and more like a conversation\u2014less \u2018here&#8217;s what&#8217;s wrong\u2019 and more \u2018here&#8217;s where we can dig deeper.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is something incredibly satisfying, almost magical, in those small, right-aligned edits that a good editor suggests. A word change here, a rephrase there, and suddenly the piece feels tighter, braver. One editor suggested I cut an entire paragraph detailing a painful memory I thought was essential to the piece. \u2018The story feels stronger without this part,\u2019 she said, and once I&#8217;d made the cut, I realized the rest of the piece came into sharper focus, allowing the heart of the essay to shine through.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About a difficult piece she wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cGoing into these pieces alone would have felt impossible. I needed someone at the mouth of that cave, someone who could shine a light and pull me back if things got too dark. A good editor does exactly that. I couldn&#8217;t have written my most important pieces without knowing that support was there, without that trust.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/writingelizabeth.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Elizabeth Austin&#8217;s\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>writing has appeared in\u00a0<em>HuffPost, Today.com, Thrillist, The Sun, Reactor Mag<\/em>, and others. She holds an M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with her two children and their many pets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Note from Marlene:<\/strong><br>How to find a good editor? Email your ideas to me: mcullen \u2013 at \u2013 sonic.net<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just Write!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thoughts from Elizabeth Austin. \u201cA good editor gives feedback that feels less like judgment and more like a conversation\u2014less \u2018here&#8217;s what&#8217;s wrong\u2019 and more \u2018here&#8217;s where we can dig deeper.\u2019 There is something incredibly satisfying, almost magical, in those small, right-aligned edits that a good editor suggests. A word change here, a rephrase there, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[126],"tags":[1740],"class_list":["post-13853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-write-2","tag-brevity-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-3Br","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13853"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13857,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13853\/revisions\/13857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}