To the Owner of the Manuscript I Just Massacred.
Please, stop crying. People are staring.
Hey Milton,
Listen, before you freak out, just listen. This is for the best. What happened to your manuscript over the past few weeks, it had to be this way. You get that, right?
I’m only putting this out there because first-time authors freak out when they open up the document I sent back to them, the one with all of the tracked changes. It is usually a mass of pulp, dripping with red ink like freshly smashed roadkill. Of course, it’s not ink. Everything is digital — less mess.
But it’s still a mess. All those red lines of corrections and suggested edits and notes in the margin? Those are how we clean up the mess.
Yes, we. You and I together. That’s why I’m here -to be your wingman, your teammate.
As the writer, you are fully invested in protecting the integrity of your story. As you should be. Hell, no one else is going to do it. As your editor, I’m here to guard the sanity of your readers. They are your audience, after all, the people you want reading your story.
I mean, you do want people to read this, right? Why else are we bothering? Those people are expecting the most out of your prolific, brilliant, storytelling-ass. They want…
