Well Met,
Friend
Welcome!
My name is Andrew Roos Bell. I’m a reader, a photographer, and a wanderer, and I’ve been at turns a student, an educator, and even a medievalist. But through all of this, I am an editor. My whole life, both personal and professional, has been defined by my relationship to words. I’ve studied English literature and taught English composition, and I’ve helped others with their words, editing manuscripts professionally and giving editorial feedback as a teacher. If you’re a writer working on a project or manuscript, I would love to help you too. I also use this site as a space for my own writing, so feel free to check that out as well!
Why Hire an Editor?
I hesitated to write this, both because it seems self-serving, but also because it risks breaking a cardinal rule of editing – to avoid redundance. After all, if you’re on my site, you probably have already decided you might need an editor. But if you’re still exploring your options, consider this: most writing is done to reach others, and in that mission there’s no substitute for a perspective outside your own. I’m a writer as well, and I know from experience how hard it is to see a way to strengthen my own work – I’m just too close to it. If you’re submitting a manuscript to literary agents or publications that are already flooded with material, you want your work to be at its absolute best. And if you’re self-publishing, or just writing for a direct audience, it’s even more important to have a second pair of eyes on a text before it goes public. The key is to have someone who isn’t so close to you or your work that they can’t be objective – someone outside your supportive circle of friends, who can challenge you honestly – but who is, at the end of the day, on your team and invested in your success as a writer. That’s where a good editor comes in.
Proofreading
Proofreading is the final stage of editing before sending a piece of writing to its intended audience. During a proofread, the editor checks the text thoroughly for errors, either grammatical or typographical, and makes sure everything is watertight. To proofreading I bring an attention to detail developed over long hours of data entry, vetting text for absolute accuracy.
Line & Copy Editing
Line & copy editing often go hand in hand. This is the bulk of the editorial process, carefully going through a text at the level of paragraphs and sentences and working to make it really sing. This type of editing does correct errors, but it also strengthens the text, rearranging sentences, deleting unnecessary words, fact-checking for inaccuracies. If proofreading is about making sure there are no accidental mistakes in what was said, line and copy editing are about deciding how best to say it. This is where most of my professional editing experience lies, and this focus on the poetry and power of the specific words used draws on my own affection for poetry and rhetoric.
Developmental Editing
Developmental editing involves the most trust between author and editor, but it also has the greatest potential to improve a work of writing. The process of developmental editing involves working with the author to strategically review the overall plan of a work – the big picture ideas, the flow of the structure, key creative choices. This can sound daunting to anyone attached enough to their writing to have invested enough of themself to write it, but I find it helpful to remember that at the end of the day, the editor is really only clarifying choices for the author. This is unsurprisingly the form of editing that most excites me, because it draws on my background as a student of literature and all forms of writing. It also allows me to practice the habit of imaginative empathy, both for writer and audience, to help your writing bridge that gap.
Researching
Research isn’t really a form of editing, but it’s something that I enjoy and have both experience & expertise in. I used to compete in and then coach policy debate, and one of my favorite parts of that was researching public policy. Then I spent years pursuing an academic career, in which I would write research papers even when I wasn’t attending a university (and consequently didn’t have library access). I remember sneakily commuting to the University of Washington after work several times a week to copy down notes from books I wasn’t allowed to check out. Whether it’s sourcing for a writing project, or research for any other purpose, I’m delighted to take on any research project.
Last-Minute Editing
This isn’t a style of editing on its own, but I am available to jump into a project on a tight deadline and quickly bring things in line with where they need to be. I list this as a separate service because it requires more flexibility depending on your deadline, both in terms of the rate of pay and the types of edits being prioritized. If you have a deadline coming up, please let me know the word count of the writing you need edited, the type of editing you are interested in, and the deadline you need it by, so I can let you know promptly if I am able to clear my schedule in time.
Get in Touch
As I mentioned above, I’m beginning to look for work as an editor and writer. If you’d like to discuss a project with me (or to talk about anything else for that matter), I’d love to hear from you.