Self Editing turned into Self Publishing

from Linda Judd

For years, when I was growing up, I edited what I said. For some reason, I have a knack for pointing out flaws, which in my early years, bordered on offending tender egos. So over the years, with self-editing, I have learned, with some success, to win friends and influence enemies.

To me, editing is a creative process and it includes reading, listening and coaching. I like helping writers dig out their words. Sometimes I read along as the story is read aloud. Does it have clarity? ryhthm? do I stay with the story from beginning to end? I want to give edits that are in support of the story, and similar to the author’s writing style.

I have designed layouts for many newspapers and community organizations, from promotional materials to advertisements and logos, from one page documents to books, (a telephone book of 120 pages, and a 366 page anthology—and yes, another one by a new set of “Ageless Muses” is on the design table).

I’m a sketch artist, a computer artist for all forms of image manipulation, with experience in many graphic software packages and systems. I have created content for web and print media.

“Reflections of Ageless Muses,” a 6×9 book of 366-pages was privately published, we paid a printer, so that makes it self-published. As one of the 20 writers and artists, who wrote stories, poems, and memoirs, and stories based on memoirs in this book, I doubled as its Special Editor. I designed the pages and covers and created the press-ready PDF files. I worked with many software packages that helped produce the words, the graphics, and the layouts for pages, as well as the software for printing these files to PDF and paper, and hopefully soon the web. I’m still convincing the other ageless muses that it’s worth it.