I used to think being an editor would be a cool job.

[Tobin S.]

Now I don't.

I have a 20,000 word manuscript here written by a friend of ours from Kenya. He does pretty well for a guy whose first language is not English, but the story is still kind of rough. He mentioned the manuscript one day and I told him to send it to me. I reworked a page and a half of it and showed it to him. He liked it and I told him I'd edit the whole thing.

Maybe it's because I'm not getting paid to do it or there's no benefit to me for the work. I'm having a hard time feeling motivated about getting this thing done. I'm about a third of the way through, and I need to knock it out by next Monday when school starts up again for me.

I suppose I should quit complaining about it and get the deal done. See y'all later.

[Xyzse]

1. You can...

Scan some of it, and ask some trusted people to type up their parts for you.

Copy and paste to designated area, and you're golden.

[elleng]

2. Not fun, imo,

unless its not a lengthy piece, and the writer won't be offended by edits.

I did ask a friend to edit part of a lengthy legal document/decision years ago. I hadn't written it, was 'supervising,' friend didn't want to but I prevailed, knew she'd do a good job.

For me, motivation comes and goes unpredictably.

Good luck, Tobin.

[lame54]

3. If Obama wants this done - you should do it...

[rug]

4. That's one of the best ways to master writing.

[Aristus]

5. I once offered to edit the self-help motivational book written by one of my wife's colleagues.

Boy, was that a mistake!

It was so poorly written, that slogging through the morass of poor grammar and sentence structure, banal prose-styling and just plain boring anecdotes was a nightmare.

I sent it back to him with the editing job unfinished and told him I just didn't have the time...

[nolabear]

6. Yes, it's tricky, and a hard job.

I've done a fair bit of it, and if the writer is experienced at taking constructive criticism it can be fun. Regular old typos and grammatical errors are black and white. But people really do get attached to their work and even experienced writers lose track of what's on the page and what's in their heads, and think they're saying something far different from what the reader sees.

Maybe you can find a reward in there somewhere. Hang tough!

[RebelOne]

7. I was a copy editor for 30 national outdoors magazines.

And I loved that job. Unfortunately, I was laid off in 2010 along with my boss and 2 other editors. I would still be working there today if I could.

[Neoma]

8. I'm drawing/photoshopping the logo for the club I lead.

Guess how enthused I am at that. Someone else was supposed to do it.

As for editing, good luck. I'd rather be drawing a logo.

[NV Whino]

9. Gawd, never do it for free

Even a nominal charge helps.

If you do it in the future, edit a few pages to get the feel for how long it would take. Then charge by the hour. If it's in bad shape, up the price.

I've just finished producing/publishing two books for members of my writing group. Because a lot of the grammatical stuff gets fixed in the writing group, the editing is minimal and I can concentrate on the design.