Meet the Editor: Shelley Thrasher

You know her as:

Shelley Thrasher is a consulting style editor for an up-and-coming book company. She teaches an online fine-arts course at the college where she retired and posts a poem weekly on her blog. Shelley has just completed a memoir/historical novel set during World War One and looks forward to publishing it.

When did you first notice you were hung up on typos?After I became an editor, I could no longer read a book for pleasure because the typos began to leap out at me, and still do.

What advice would you give someone interested in becoming an editor?Know the basic rules of composition and grammar, and know when to break them. Before I became an editor I earned a BA, MA, and PhD in English, taught English on the college level for many years, and attended many writers’ workshops. After picking up my editor’s pen, I still had to rely on the more experienced editors at our company for tips about how to edit fiction.

Be prepared to realize you don’t know everything about writing and never will.

Enjoy learning something new every day.

What's the best advice you have ever received from a writer?“Don’t correct my writing. Point out what I’m doing and explain why it isn’t effective, then let me change it myself.”

What's the best advice you've given a writer?Give yourself plenty of time to complete your book. Take breaks between drafts so you can view them objectively each time you revise them.

In your opinion, what makes an editor great?The ability to become excited about an author’s story but not yield to the temptation to take it over. The ability to help a writer fulfill her potential to the fullest.

What's the one misperception about editors you want to clear up? We don’t know everything about writing, and we sometimes forget a character’s eye or hair color, even if we read it only five pages earlier.

Why should a writer choose to work with you?Because I’m very patient, I’m kind most of the time, I’ve had a lot of experience, and I always meet my deadlines.

What genres do you focus on? Why?I focus on romance and literary novels. The romances make money for our company, so I am assigned many of them. The literary novels don’t make as much money, but I prefer them because I have studied and taught literature most of my life. The literary novels are not formulaic like the romances, and their authors use more metaphorical language and create more in-depth characters.

Shelley Thrasher has a PhD in English and specializes in editing novels written by women. She spends most of her time style-editing for Bold Strokes Books. She also enjoys writing poetry and novels, which you can find on Amazon.