The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself »

Susan Bell has edited fiction and nonfiction professionally, including at Random House and Conjunctions magazine, for almost twenty years. She lives in New York City and teaches at The New School and Tin House Writers Workshop.

"Bell's prose is elegant and wonderfully readable in this artful guide."—Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly

Every writer is an editor if only for choosing one word over another. However, the ability to edit your own work consciously as you go along or after the work is done is another thing altogether and one that leaves many a writer nonplussed. Enter Bell, a long-time professional editor of both fiction and nonfiction (Dare to Hope: Saving American Democracy) as well as a teacher of editing at the New School in New York. Bell flat out states that self-editing is not only possible, it's necessary, and it can be learned. She provides a slew of ingenious methods for viewing your work with fresh eyes (hang the pages on a clothesline, use a different font when printing out). She also supplies exercises on macro-editing (dealing with structure, character, etc.). Neither how-to nor memoir, the book includes a little bit of everything: Bell's own experiences editing writers; a long section on how F. Scott Fitzgerald-the consummate self-editor-produced The Great Gatsby; lengthy quotes by well-known authors on their self-editing process; and a list of editing symbols. Bell's prose is elegant and wonderfully readable in this artful guide. (Aug.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Introduction     1
Gaining Perspective     8
The Big Picture: Macro-Editing     42
The Details: Micro-Editing     95
Master Class     146
Servants, Dictators, Allies: A Brief History of Editors     182
Basic Copyediting Symbols     216
Bibliography     218
Acknowledgments     226
Credits     229