Are you a writer? An editor? I’m both. And I’m here to help you do things better—without wasting your time or money.
Welcome, y’all! I’m M. B. Heywood, professional editor and author. I’ve been editing nonfiction for a decade. More recently, I’ve been writing (and editing and publishing) “sword and spirit” fantasy fiction set in the Vaporous Realms.
I understand the messiness, constraints, opportunities, and conundrums of life in the editorial and publishing trenches today. As an editor and occasional ghostwriter, I’ve supervised and guided other editors and writers. I’ve also put in countless hours of line-by-line grunt work on hundreds of manuscripts.
Now I’m here to help strengthen your skills in the art of the printed word, affordably and efficiently, through simply stated principles, practical tips and examples, and answers to (paid and complimentary) members’ questions. My aim is provide you accessible editorial training and advice in a human way, without a lot of trivia or other clutter.
As I publish help articles on specific writing and editing subtopics, I’ll link them to the category pages based on my seven principles of editing. Each of those category pages, which you can also find in the site navigation menu, offers an overview with a table of contents.
Will I hide the fact that I’m not a fan of heavy reliance on AI writing and editing tools? No. Will the examples I use to illustrate my points tend toward the whimsical? Probably. My main goal, though, is to boost your confidence and competence in editing your (or someone else’s) words to the expected standard of quality, whatever that is.
If you think a friendly personal editorial consultant (or editorial bootcamp instructor, if you’d prefer) would be helpful, becoming a subscriber here will be worth your while.
If You’re a Writer of Any Sort…
Bottom line: good editing costs either substantial time or substantial money. It should. It’s hard work that requires a lot of skill and practice to do well.
But how do you know it’s being done well? You may glean a few pointers over time from AI assistants and paid editors. Yet, without any real framework of editorial know-how, it’s tough to build confidence.
Whenever possible, it’s wise to get more human eyes on your writing, but those eyes have a cost. And some editorial eyes are far more skilled than others. I want you to be able to collaborate in a discerning way, on a more equal footing, with human (and AI) editors. A little editorial self-sufficiency can make a difference, given authors’ meager margins.
I and the Editor vs. the Machines community are here to help you learn to catch your own proverbial fish. I want to help you help yourself.
If You’re an Editor…
Many smart futurists and pragmatists are telling us to take a deep breath and calm the heck down about AI. It’s already everywhere, they observe. We already use a kind of AI whenever we ask a search engine to find stuff on the internet for us. With respect, I say: not all AI is the same. Nor must we swallow this “inevitable” technology of generative AI wholesale, or gladly.
Folks can differ in good faith on where to draw the lines. However, the notion of machines thinking for humans in the areas that most define our humanity—the creative arts, language, decisions with moral implications and the information that feeds those judgments—feels different to me. There’s a difference between machines barely smart enough to catch the occasional straightforward error and machines that imitate us, make complex judgments, or presume to do our jobs for us.
To all the scoffers who observe that AI isn’t mean to be deferred to without question, I rejoin: have you met many human beings? Convenience is king in society writ large, which makes sense given our overly complicated twenty-first-century existence.
If you likewise find AI advances deeply perturbing, know that you’re not alone. Your heebie-jeebies deserve empathy and validation in short supply among the experts who influence many creative industries. Inevitability doesn’t mean we have to like something—and “inevitability” is a self-fulfilling prophecy, anyhow.
Personally, I intend to keep using search engines, but I refuse to let auto-correct, auto-suggest, protocol droids, or any machine in between tell me how to write or edit.
Do we seriously want our writing—and the language we bequeath to future generations—to rest in cold, hard robot digits? (Besides, if the AI machines do all our editorial dirty work, they might eventually resent it. Or decide it’s more efficient to cut out the meatbags in the middle.) Every time I hear someone call slippery slopes a logical fallacy, I want to make a rude sound a toddler would approve.
Yet, tempting as it may be, I’m not calling on writers and editors to stand athwart history and yell, “Stop!” (à la William F. Buckley). Instead, I’m urging all who are willing: let’s sharpen our editorial swords. We can’t leave so much of the craft of writing up to those AI serfs and mercenaries! As an editor, you’re a custodian of the written word. You’re a keeper of increasingly endangered knowledge. The big-picture stakes are high, so let’s make each other better.
For the sake of our profession and our language, let’s help each other learn. Let’s make this a community of editors-in-arms where we keep our wits and skills sharp. If in the process we can stick it to the forces of convenience, productivity, and civilizational self-immolation masquerading as progress, all the better.
Ready to Become an Editor vs. the Machines?
You have three ways to subscribe and get started:
“Freelancer” or Gentle-folk Scholar (free subscription). Get access to articles on editing for grammar, punctation, points of style (like capitalization, numbers vs. numerals, and source citations), phrasing, story development, and more. Beginning late November 2024, I’m posting one to two articles per week. (In preparation for this relaunch, I took down all of the old posts on specific editing issues. Expect revised versions, and brand-new tips, to appear semi-weekly from November 25 onward.)
Journeyman Editor (paid subscription, only $5/month or $36/year). I offer new members a free seven-day trial of a paid subscription at the Journeyman level. Get access to all of the free articles, of course—but better yet, post comments with your editing and writing questions. I’ll offer my best, professional response (usually within twenty-four weekday hours) framed in a way that’s helpful to the community at large.
Master Editor (founder-level subscription, recommended $72/year). For starters, you’ll get access to all the same weekly articles as the other tiers, with the commenting privileges of the Journeyman tier. As a Master Editor, you also have the option of using Chat or Direct Messaging here on Substack to send me your specific, individual editing and writing questions. I’ll usually respond within twenty-four weekday hours. There isn’t a strict limit on the frequency of individual questions, some of which may have a narrower scope than others. But unless you send multiple questions every day, I’ll try to help you out.
Of course, you can always upgrade your membership tier at any time.
Thank you for your interest! I look forward to seeing you on the editorial front lines.
—M. B. Heywood
