Could you edit someone else’s writing?

Hmm, interesting question isn’t it?  It was one that I hadn’t thought of when I first started writing full time for the internet, and I never considered it as a possible source of income.  I certainly didn’t put myself out there in this way.

But as it happened a good friend of mine who sends a lot of work my way asked me if I could do some.  This was about a year or so ago.  I thought, why not?  I’ll give it a go.  And it made a nice change from writing – a nice change of pace.

Could editing as well as writing bring in more income for you?

To start with it was just a few articles.  But over time I ended up getting the odd book that someone else had written that needed editing.  And a few months ago I had a workbook in from a client who needed it stripped down to about a third of its original length.  That was about the toughest job so far I think, but it was exciting and challenging nonetheless.

I guess what I wanted to say was that you shouldn’t disregard editing as a possible second source of income.  It sits nicely alongside your writing, and of course you should be quite experienced at editing by the very nature of having to edit your own work!  I would never edit full time, but every now and then when an editing job comes along I really look forward to doing it.

A change of pace does us all good as writers.  But could you change pace enough to become an editor of other people’s work as well?  It’s something to think on, isn’t it?

Tags: articles, books, Editing, learning, writing