What Writing a Book Taught Me About Being an Editor | CrimeReads

My entire childhood I hoped to write books, and entered the publishing industry after college on the now humorous assumption-humorously wrong, and also humorously correct for reasons I did not then understand-that being an editor would help me realize that dream. I became a full-fledged book editor in 2007, after the assumed unpaid internship and then editorial assistantship. The last twelve years, during which I have had the opportunity to steep myself in the brain-product of many talented writers, have been a period of academic study in the discipline of the novel. I often found it very difficult to write when I was so immersed in other writers' creative worlds-I felt like I wasn't being the best editor I could be, the editor the author deserved, if I was simultaneously engaging in my own creative endeavors.