This was a great story about your fear of skeletons! It was beautifully written too. I don’t write horror but I’m afraid of being dizzy (I just got over a bout of it!) and crazily, throwing up.

I love your blog!

Content editing is really important if you’re self-publishing a book.
Barbara

But now it can also mean “proofreading” (catching micro-mistakes such as typos and misplaced punctuation), “critiquing” (feedback on what works and doesn’t work) and “revising” (the writer improving her/his own work).

So five people talking about “editing” their work may be talking about five different things, and this can lead to misundertandings.

For example, one writer may advise a novice “Don’t edit your own work” (meaning “Don’t proofread it, because you won’t spot your own spelling errors”) and the novice thinks she doesn’t need to revise her writing.

Another example: an novice indie author proudly proclaims that her book has been “edited” (meaning she got feedback from a crit buddy) and is therefore ready for publication.

With the changing role of editors in the new publishing world, the definitions are getting more and more muddled. Hopefully, new words will emerge to replace the old and make things clearer. Until then, writers and editors need to be very careful to clarify what they mean and what they want from one another.