Authors In The Media With Sara Omer 

I am so delighted to have Sara Omer back to do this Authors In The Media Q&A! We discussed her upcoming novel coming out this summer on July 8^th titled The Gryphon King.  You can read last year’s regular Q&A with Sara here by clicking this link https://booknotions.com/qa-with-sara-omer/ . In this Authors In The Media Q&A we will discuss her editing career! 

Q: Sara in our Q&A we briefly discussed your career as an editor before becoming an author. What drew you into being an editor?

A: I always wanted to work with books, but originally, I didn’t commit to writing a book or being an author, despite writing stories for fun my whole life. I thought my future was on the other side of that publication partnership, and I thought editing was a more realistic career aspiration to have and a steadier one. I felt more confident pursuing an English degree with the aspiration of being an editor in mind. I always excelled in English classes, and I’d been a writing tutor through most of high school and college, which involved a lot of the same skills as editing. Some of these beliefs were eventually challenged.

Q: You wrote about how editing has given you experience as to how hard an editor’s job is when they are editing an author’s work. When writing The Gryphon King, did you find yourself editing as you went along writing the story?

A: All authors are editing throughout the writing and editorial processes. Editing happens at several steps before an editor looks at your work: self-edits should be happening, and drafts should go through critique partners or beta readers and be revised. However, my editor, copyeditor, and proofreader for The Gryphon King have been so unbelievably helpful, and I’m so grateful for their expertise making the story professional and presentable. I think as writers sometimes we’re not as attuned to our own writing quirks, so it’s very necessary to have an editor point those out. 

Q: You’ve edited several children’s and young adult authors’ novels as well as modern art magazines and medical & engineering publications! It’s so impressive! Sara, could you give me a list of some of these authors you’ve worked with?  

A: As an intern at Peachtree and ART PAPERS, I wasn’t directly corresponding with authors as much as I was editing passes on projects that the entire editorial department was taking a crack at or my supervisors at least were looking at. Two projects I worked on a bit more closely were Fault Lines in the Constitution by Cynthia and Sanford Levinson and The Bookshop Girl by Sylvia Bishop, the latter of which mainly involved changing some words for an American audience compared to a UK one. I worked most closely with writers as a technical editor, so I was working with different engineers, healthcare practitioners, and researchers. 

Q: What would aspiring authors need to do, to get you to edit their work?

A: Between starting to teach English composition this August at Kennesaw State University, attending my own classes as I get my Masters’, and meeting my looming writing deadlines, I probably don’t have the bandwidth in the near future to edit novel-length projects, but writers can always reach out on Instagram, Twitter, or BlueSky (@omersarae), and if I can’t take on a project, I can definitely try to put them in touch with an editor friend who could help!