NAWGFest16

I have an article on SCBWI's Words & Pictures magazine about a writing festival called NAWGFest16 which is part of the National Association of Writers' Groups. You can find the original article at this link:

http://www.wordsandpics.org/2016/09/event-report-national-association-of.html

Kate Foster Editorial

I recently joined Kate Foster's team as the Digital Communications Assistant. You can see me and the rest of the team at...
http://www.katejfoster.com/meet-the-team.html

It's worth signing up for Kate's monthly newsletter to get some great writing and editing tips, and offers for free or reduced editorials. Keep an eye out on Twitter for #EditFoster too, where Kate shares some great tips and motivation for writers :)

Here's my piece of choosing an editor for my MG book, featured in the current newsletter...

Choosing an Editor

As with any relationship, it’s important to make sure you’re not rushing into something you may later regret. You don’t want to end up with the ‘wrong one’ and have your trust broken.

Trust is an important thing when choosing an agent. You may have spent months or years getting your story to the point it’s at now. It’s precious, and your editor might be the first person other than you to read it. So choosing that right editor is vital.

For me, I spent time looking at various options, including the big relatively faceless companies that offer a wide range of services at top end prices. Often these are inflexible on certain matters; in particular, they often don’t enter into further correspondence after the edit.

Of course, this is worst case scenario and not all were like that, but I knew, for me, the personal touch was important, and I wanted someone who I found friendly and approachable. So I asked around for personal recommendations. Along with those, people wanted to share their horror stories: the editors who didn’t actually do a whole lot of editing, but did charge a lot; editorials littered with spelling and grammatical errors, never a reassuring sign; and editors who were downright rude and refused to enter into any discussion about the editorial.

Fortunately, the doom and gloom weren’t the only stories that I heard. I had some genuine and positive ones too.

I came across Kate’s services via a blog piece by a writer I already followed on Twitter, who had worked with Kate and it had led to her landing an agent. This was precisely what I hoped for. Kate was also recommended by another writer who I spoke with online, and had also received an editorial from Kate, and I was already following Kate on Twitter.

 I’d come to a point with my book that I felt I’d done as much as I could by myself. I now needed the guidance of someone with a professional eye, but friendly and approachable attitude. I was nervous and a bit scared to share my book. But I needn’t have been.

Kate was so helpful and friendly, and even offered to read and edit the first chapter before I committed to anything so we could both see if we would be happy together, and I could get a feel for her approach. Kate also offers payment plans, unlike a lot of places, so you can pay in instalments. She also gave me plenty of options to ‘opt-out’ if I didn’t feel comfortable to commit. But getting an editorial from Kate has been one of the best choices I’ve ever made!

She has been so helpful, thorough, engaging, friendly, answering my inane questions and allowing me to ask about new plot ideas. The next stage for me now is for Kate to re-read my book post-edits, also a service a lot don’t offer.

Kate has really put me at ease and has helped shape my book. The shaping continues as I am editing the final chapter right now, but the end is in sight, and Kate has helped me achieve that.

So, that’s how I chose my editor!
Sign up for the newsletter here...
http://www.katejfoster.com/contact-us.html