Looseleaf Editorial & Production

Book Editing & Design

Looseleaf

New Content Disclosures Policy

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Looseleaf will now request content disclosures for new projects. I know these sorts of content flags make some authors nervous. Are we saying you shouldn’t write about these things? Why can’t we just let you write about the difficult things of the world? Shouldn’t art explore the full breadth of human experience?

The answers: These topics can be very important to write about, we have no desire to stop you writing about difficult things, and art should be a mirror for the full spectrum of experience. So why do we ask for these disclosures?

So we can find you the best fit on our team and so whoever works on your project can be at their best. [Read more…] about New Content Disclosures Policy

Looseleaf Is Growing!

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Meet the Looseleaf team: an image with three headshots in it.We are pleased to announce that Looseleaf is growing in exciting ways. Most significantly for our clients, some truly talented editors have joined the Looseleaf team, which will shorten the wait time for new and existing clients who schedule our top-notch services. Even though we are growing, Kristy S. Gilbert—Looseleaf’s founder and executive editor—personally directs and coaches our team of editors to ensure that we still provide Looseleaf’s unique suite of editing and book layout services to get your book reader-ready (read more about our growing team further below). [Read more…] about Looseleaf Is Growing!

2021’s Brave New Things

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Time may be an illusion, but it can be a useful one. This week marks my birthday, and this year is an even decade after I opened my own editing and design firm in 2011. These milestones, however artificial, give me a chance to reflect on how I’ve grown this year.

But growth doesn’t always mean new external achievements. Sometimes it just means being braver than you were before. One guiding star I’ve used when measuring my growth has been this discussion of courage by Catherynne M. Valente:

When you are born … your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing someone will think you foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk, and crusty things, and fear, and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you’re half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it’s so grunged up with living. So every once in a while, you have to scrub it up again and get the works going, or else you’ll never be brave again. [1]Valente, Catherynne M. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. New York: Feiwel & Friends, 2011.

I’ve tried to keep the idea of scrubbing up my courage in mind for several years now, always biting off a bit of something new that scares me but is worth doing anyway. Swallowing the fear keeps the gears greased.

So what have I done to grow this year? A lot of things. Here are some of the bookish ones. [Read more…] about 2021’s Brave New Things

References

References
↑1 Valente, Catherynne M. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. New York: Feiwel & Friends, 2011.

Editor of the Year 2021!

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Thank you, Utah Freelance Editors and the Leauge of Utah Writers! Kristy S. Gilbert, Editor of the Year 2021I (Kristy S. Gilbert) am the first-ever Editor of the Year for the League of Utah Writers/Utah Freelance Editors. It means a lot to be honored like this by fellow editors, especially within a community as friendly and supportive as UFE. It means so much to me that I decided to put on my fanciest dress and take a picture so I could pretend I accepted a physical award during this time of virtual conferences!

This new award—initiated by UFE’s dauntless president, Talysa Sainz—is a wonderful opportunity to recognize publishing professionals who rarely approach the spotlight. I look forward to highlighting the excellent work from other UFE folks in the years to come. If you’d like to meet some other UFE pros, check out the Utah Freelance Editors database at UtahFreelanceEditors.com/find-editor.

Vary Your Character Descriptions (Guest Post)

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Kristy wrote an article about adding variety, personality, and emotion to character descriptions for Utah Freelance Editors. Below is an excerpt.
You can read the whole thing here.

Describing characters can be difficult work, but some authors unintentionally make the task more difficult by sticking to a driver’s-license-style checklist of traits about their characters—gender, hair and eye color, height, etc. This focus normally comes from an impulse to describe characters so readers will have clear images in their minds.

But using the same traits or describing characters solely in informational terms can make it harder for readers to remember things about individual characters and can hamper reader reactions and connections.

Instead, try out a few of these strategies to more efficiently create emotional situations and characters that delight and connect with your readers.

Interested? Read the full article on the Utah Freelance Editors website.

What You Need to Know Before Hiring an Editor

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Before you hire an editor, it’s important to have some foundational knowledge about the process. Here are five key bits of intel to get you started.

1. There Are Different Types of Editing

Many writers get to a stage where someone tells them to hire an editor (or comes to that decision on their own). But it’s important to know there is more than one type of editing, and those types usually need to happen in separate passes (and sometimes with different editors). Editing for character and pacing is difficult to do if you’re also correcting commas and hyphenation. [Read more…] about What You Need to Know Before Hiring an Editor

When Am I Ready for a Developmental Edit?

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Last week Looseleaf’s Kristy S. Gilbert was an editing special guest at the Life, the Universe, and Everything Symposium, and we’re going to post a few snippets from her panels. Today’s bit is from the panel “Developmental Editors.” Excerpts are lightly edited for clarity (and some parts are summarized).

Brittany Passmore: A lot of writers get really excited when they finish their book, and sometimes they’re just not sure if they’re ready for that or if they need to go through some other editing process first, so how would people know they’re ready for developmental editing, if it’s too soon, or maybe they should have done it sooner . . . what do you guys think?

Amy Michelle Carpenter, Emma Heggem, and Nic Nelson shared some wonderful advice, including working with writing groups and beta readers so you can get more bang for your buck (and so you can have a hivemind help you brainstorm fixes for the biggest revisions) and remembering that many developmental editors are happy to look over your outline and give feedback there even before you draft the book.

Kristy S. Gilbert: Yeah, I think especially in nonfiction, developmental editing can mean something different. Developmental editing can mean looking at an outline and giving feedback on how to develop the actual book that will eventually come of it. And it can also, on the other side, mean taking a full book and developing it further, so it is important to know what you’re getting when you sign up for developmental editing just ‘cause there is that fuzziness in terminology use. [Read more…] about When Am I Ready for a Developmental Edit?

Science Fiction & Fantasy Copyediting Survey

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"Copyediting Science Fiction and Fantasy." In the background, line icons of books, ereaders, and a pencil writing on paper.I’ve always been big on helping writers become better writers (rather than simply sprucing up the manuscripts they put in front of me). In my regular contributions to local writing conferences, I prepare presentations on various topics: designing effective book covers, retelling fairy tales, using folklore in worldbuilding, and more. One of my recent presentations “Copyediting Immersive Science Fiction & Fantasy,” always has a lively Q&A at the end. I’m retooling the presentation and developing other materials (blog posts, etc.) to bring more light to the quirks of editing in imagined worlds.

If you’re a writer or editor who works with SF&F (or who is thinking about pivoting or expanding your genre expertise), take a moment to fill out this survey so I can figure out which topics would be most useful. 

And hey, if you’ve got a really specific copyediting question, drop it in the comments below. (And if you need a lot of really specific editing advice, contact us about editing services tailored to your work!)