Did You Know I Offer Editing Services?

During my tenure at Abyss & Apex Magazine I’ve had the privilege of helping so many writers with a rewrite of their story. I just had another one thank me, because he felt it was rare for editors to take the time to help writers improve their stories to the extent that we do. He said:


I’m sure that I thanked you for accepting my story, but I realized that I failed to thank you for something that you did that I really appreciate and admire.  You offered me the opportunity for a rewrite.  I’m sure it’s because of the pressure of so many submissions, but I feel like many publishers just look for reasons to reject stories to reduce the size of their slush piles, and ignore good stories that are flawed but easily repairable.  I think that there are probably many wonderful stories that are never read and good writers that are never published because of easily correctable errors in execution.

Not all of them are easy. Last month I did an A&A rewrite via a four-hour videochat with a college professor who was quite conversant with literary tropes but not with those required to publish in SF &F. She was equally grateful; I was excited to get her story into shape because I saw what she was trying to do. It was ambitious, but she was not quite hitting all the notes. Now you’re all going to love her story.

And I have recently started working on A&A Patreon rewards where I am editing short stories for our patrons. Finally, I have editing clients who send me their stories and we work on them, back and forth.

It’s what I do. If you need help with a story I’d love to work on it with you.

One thought on “Did You Know I Offer Editing Services?

  1. I want to thank Wendy for giving me an opportunity to rewrite a story that I’d submitted to Abyss & Apex. I made the changes she suggested and the story was accepted.

    I’m sure that, like me, most writers hope that their stories are read by experienced editors who, even if they reject, provide meaningful critiques that can be used either as a basis for further editing or as a lesson learned for future efforts. Unfortunately, time is too precious these days, and that rarely happens. What is even rarer is for an editor to see past the weaknesses in a story and offer suggestions for improvement and a rewrite opportunity, like Wendy did for me. It is so much easier to just reject even good stories with minor flaws than to make the effort to help writers perfect them.

    The fact is that it is extremely difficult to detect flaws in your own work. Any kind of independent review is helpful, but the more professional and experienced the reviewer, the more useful the feedback. I was lucky to get the benefit of expert review as well as a second chance to get my story right. I am excited to see that Wendy offers that same professional editing to others outside of her work with Abyss & Apex, and I have no doubt that they will benefit from her expertise as I have.

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