Editing

Posted October 10th, 2010

You need an editor

You don’t think you do, but you do.

I don’t mean an editor who corrects your spelling and grammar—you probably need one of those too. I mean the sort of editor who helps you shape your story. An editor acts as an advocate for the reader and points out when you’ve lost the thread of your story—when you need more, when you need less.

I’ve edited more than twenty books for The Pragmatic Programmers and was the founding editor for java.net where I blogged daily. I’ve edited O’Reilly’s ONJava.com and the IBM developerWorks’ site the Java Zone.