Editing

Placeholder text — Robert will write about his editing work here.

Alongside criticism, I work as an editor: with poets and prose writers, with magazines, and occasionally with book-length manuscripts that have lost their way. This page is where I will describe that work — the kinds of projects I take on, how I like to work with a writer, and a few of the things I have helped bring into print.

Good editing is mostly listening. The aim is never to make a piece sound like me, but to help it sound more fully like itself — to find the argument beneath the draft and clear away whatever is standing in its light. Sometimes that means deep structural work; sometimes it is a matter of a dozen small cuts.

If you would like to talk about an editing project, the best place to reach me is via the links on the About page.