I first encountered The Artful Edit when a writer recommended in the paper that someone should translate the book into Hebrew. Although I have not found a publishing house that is willing to translate it, I must say that reading Susan Bell’s book, in the few hours I had free this month (I got married a week ago), was an enlightening experience. I found this book to be one of the best manuals that deal with the not-so-glamorous work of editing.
No one likes to read their own work over and over again in order to mend his or her writings – most writers prefer to let other people (like me) read and edit their precious words. Don’t misunderstand me; I believe that developing a skill like editing one’s own work is an invaluable and important one. I, for example, can only edit my own work if I leave what I’ve written for six months and then come back to it with fresh eyes. In a way, only then can I look at it in the eyes of a stranger, not a lover of the text.
Still, in this bright book the examples for edited text are famous (she even uses The Great Gatsby), the matters are discussed in a clear language and that only proves that the writer knows what she is talking about. I had to learn and develop topics like micro-edit (editing on the sentence by sentence level) and macro-edit (editing characters, symbols, topics with a wider view) by myself while editing books. But, here, these tools are being handed over after deep thought. One thing I can say is that the book gives you a map of editing tools and styles such as editing version after version (using drafts and revising) or editing while you write. Personally, I think editing while you write is a method that fits poetry more than prose.
The bottom line of the book is that no matter how good your editor is you have to be strict with yourself too and do the most before you start the editing process.