The Wave, 18 x24, acrylic. 2018

I have been editing in various capacities most of my life – on literary magazines, for trade and academic publishers, and as a mentor to poets and fiction writers at the University of Toronto and Ryerson as well as in the larger community. To find out whether we are a good fit, and to get an estimate on what it will cost to get your work edited, please send me an email including a 250-word writing sample, as well as the following important information:

 

1) What kind of manuscript you have written (a one-sentence summary of the kind of project it is, and then a couple of paragraphs summarizing the text)

2) The length of your manuscript (in words, not pages)

3) The deadline by which you need the work done

4) Where you hope to submit your work

5) And most importantly, what kind of editing job you require. There are many different kinds of editing, and each takes a different amount of time. Like every editor, I charge on an hourly basis. For a substantive edit, I might only be able to get 1,000 words done in an hour, whereas in a final copy edit I might whiz through 4,000 words. Here is a useful list of the various kinds of editing jobs and how long you can expect them to take, adapted from fellow editor Arlene Prunkl and the EAC (I guess I’m faster than average, which is lucky for you!):

• Developmental, substantive, structural editing, rewriting — 500 to 1000 words per hour
• Heavy to medium copy editing, stylistic editing — 500 to 2000 words per hour
• Medium to light copy editing, stylistic editing — 1000 to 2500 words per hour
• Proofreading — 1500-3000 words per hour
• Manuscript evaluations — 2500-4000 words per hour, plus the time it takes to write up the evaluation.

When I have that information I will be able to send you an estimate on the job. I will also edit the extract you have sent me, so that you can see what kind of response to expect from me and decide whether I am the right person to work with you.

For a more detailed description of the different kinds of editing please see: http://www.editors.ca/hire/definitions.html

References:

“When I think of Susan Glickman’s editing skills, I think of those seasoned paleontologists in the field, bent low and patiently over a bit of fossilized bone, revealing what was there all along by brushing away ever so gently all that hides it from itself. “

                    – Jeffery Donaldson,  Missing Link: The Evolution of Metaphor and the Metaphor of  Evolution            

            

BOOKS I’VE EDITED FOR MCGILL-QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY PRESS:

Like Everyone Else, But Different: The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews, 2nd edition, Morton Weinfeld, 2018.

 My Peerless Story: It Begins with the Collar, Alvin Cramer Segal, 2018.

Collapse of a Country: A Diplomat’s Memoir of South Sudan, Nicholas Coghlan, 2017.

Swingback: Getting Along in the World with Harper and Trudeau, Mike Blanchfield, 2017.

The Promise and Challenge of Party Primary Elections: A Comparative Perspective, by William Cross, Ofer Kenig, Scott Pruysers, and Gideon Rahat, 2016.

The Flowering of Modern Chinese Verse: Poetry from the Republican Period, translated by Herbert Batt and Sheldon Zitner, with introductions by Michel Hockx,  2016.

 Alice in Shandehland: Scandal and Scorn in the Edelson/Horwitz Murder Case, by Monda Halpern, 2015.

Listening to the Heartbeat of Being: The Arts of Robert Bringhurst, edited by Brent Wood and Mark Dickinson, 2015.

Missing Link: The Evolution of Metaphor and the Metaphor of Evolution, by Jeffrey Donaldson, 2015.

Maps and Memes: Redrawing Culture, Place, and Identity in Indigenous Communities, by Gwilym Lucas Eades, 2015.

You’re Not Dead until You’re Forgotten: John Dunning, A Memoir, with Bill Brownstein, 2014.

David Lodge and the Tradition of the Modern Novel by J. Russell Perkin, 2014.

Magda and André Trocmé: Resistance Figures, translated by Jo-Anne Elder and edited by Pierre Boismorand, 2014.

The Birth of the New Criticism: Conflict and Conciliation in the Early Work of William Empson, I.A. Richards, Laura Riding and Robert Graves, by Donald J. Childs, 2013.

In Time: Short Poems, Long Poems, and the Rhetoric of North American Avant-Gardism, 1963-2008, edited by J. Mark Smith, 2013.

Garden Plots: Canadian Women Writers and Their Literary Gardens, by Shelley Boyd, 2013.

Democracy’s Angels: The Work of Women Teachers in Toronto and Vancouver, 1945-1960, by Kristina R Llewellyn, 2012

Bearing Witness: Perspectives on War and Peace from the Arts and Humanities, edited by Sherrill Grace, Patrick Imbert, and Tiffany Johnstone, 2012      

Four Historical Definitions of Architecture, by Stephen Parcell, 2012.

Rediscovering Reverence: The Meaning of Faith in a Secular World, by Ralph Heintzman, 2011.

Outside the Box: The Life and Legacy of Writer Mona Gould, the Grandmother I Thought I Knew, by Maria Meindl, 2011. (Winner Alison Prentice Award for women’s history, 2011)

Georges and Pauline Vanier: Portrait of a Couple, by Mary Frances Coady, 2011.

Picturing the Land: Narrating Territories in Canadian Landscape Art, 1500-1950, by Marylin J. McKay, 2011.

Working Without Commitments: The Health Effects of Precarious Employment, by Wayne Lewchuk, Marlea Clarke, and Alice de Wolff, 2011.

The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal, by Sean Mills, 2010.  (Winner First Book Prize Quebec Writers’ Federation Awards 2010; Shortlisted Sir John A. Macdonald Prize Canadian Historical Association, 2011)

Marian and the Major: Marian Engel’s “Elizabeth and the Golden City,” edited by Christl Verduyn, 2010.

Romantic Ecologies and Colonial Cultures in the British-Atlantic World 1770-1850, by Kevin Hutchings, 2009.

Woman’s Songs in Ancient Greece, by Anne L. Klinck, 2008.

The Geography of Aging: Preparing Communities for the Surge in Seniors, by Gerald Hodge, 2008.

Mr Charlotte Bronte: The Life of Arthur Bell Nicholls, by Alan H. Adamson, 2008.

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Also, here’s an article I wrote for an online blog that might be of interest:

“Editing the First Time Novelist,” The Editors’ Weekly (January 28) http://blog.editors.ca/2014/01/editing-the-first-time-novelist/