If you aspire to write a book, something I call “agile editing” can help you succeed. And no, it doesn’t involve doing cartwheels while wielding a red pen. It’s a process I devised with consultant and author Marc Strohlein when editing his book, The Energized Enterprise: How to Tap Your Organization’s Hidden Potential, available in print and e-book versions. (Here’s my blog post about the book. And another insightful review.) Agile editing is a partnership between writer Read more [...]

Good editors need certain qualities. Excellent grammar. Attention to detail. A dirty mind. Yes, a dirty mind. Think about it. An editor’s job is to correct mistakes and remove any distractions that might divert the reader’s attention or embarrass the writer. That includes accidental double entendres. Now, I’m a pretty straight-laced gal. But I can spot a double-entendre a mile away, with my eyes closed. So I had to laugh when I received an e-mail with this subject line from the alumni Read more [...]

Some years ago, my husband and I and our two young children moved from Europe, where we had been working, back to California. Moving an entire household across an ocean and a continent is a huge job. And it requires “editing” your life: You sell your electric appliances because they won’t work in the new place. You get rid of junk that’s been sitting around for years because you don’t want to pay to move it halfway around the world. You send only the bare minimum of your remaining Read more [...]