This week I’m joined by kidlit author Erin Dealey. Erin shares how editing is like pottery and a checklist of important points for children’s book self-editing (word count, hook, marketability, and aha! endings). Plus she makes Edit Your Darlings history with our first rap!
Music: Harlequin by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3858-harlequin
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Show Notes:
@erindealey on Twitter and Instagram
https://www.facebook.com/erin.dealey
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/erindealey/_saved/
Peter Easter Frog
Dear Earth…from Your Friends in Room 5
K is for Kindergarten
Snow Globe Wishes
Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI): https://www.scbwi.org/
Caitlyn Dlouhy
Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8036440-interrupting-chicken
Tamar Mays
Melissa Stewart: https://www.melissa-stewart.com/
Sarah Scheerger, Operation Frog Effect, Mitzvah Pizza: https://www.sarahlynnbooks.com/
Ernesto Cisneros, Efran Divided, Falling Short: https://www.ernestocisneros.com/
Patricia Newman, Planet Ocean: https://www.patriciamnewman.com/
Lori Mortensen, Arlo Draws an Octopus: https://www.lorimortensen.com/
Bitsy Kemper: https://bitsykemper.wordpress.com/
2021derfuls: https://twitter.com/2021derfuls
Transcript:
Ariel: Hi there and welcome to Edit Your Darlings, a podcast that tries to take the sting out of editing by talking with darling authors about their experiences.
I’m Ariel Anderson, and today I’m joined by Erin Dealey. Erin is the author of 16 picture books & board books (so far), many of them in rhyme. Her recent picture books include PETER EASTER FROG (published by Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, illustrated by G. Brian Karas), DEAR EARTH...From Your Friends in Room 5 (from Harper Collins / edited by Tamar Mays, illustrated by Luisa Uribe), and SNOW GLOBE WISHES (published by Sleeping Bear / edited by Sarah Rockett, illustrated by Claire Shorrock).
A credentialed English and theater teacher and former Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Co-Regional Advisor, Erin Dealey often wears her own “editor hat” as an assistant to Deborah Warren at East West Literary Agency, and provides manuscript critiques as a conference presenter. Her projects include a middle grade novel and another holiday book—to be announced soon—and her latest passion is writing screenplays!
Thank you so much for making time to talk with me, Erin.
Erin: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you, Ariel. Actually I love podcasts but I have not done one from my office before. So this is new. Fingers crossed, everybody, that my dog doesn't take over.
Ariel: What is your dog's name?
Erin: Well, I don't want to say it because when she'll show up.
Ariel: Ooh, fair.
Erin: Yeah.
Ariel: How about spelling it?
Erin: Yeah, C-H-A-R-L-I-E. She probably knows that too. So be careful.
Ariel: Okay, so here is something that absolutely blows my mind. You told me that your first kidlit editor, Caitlyn Dlouhy, of Athenium and Simon and Schuster, where she now has her own imprint, pulled your very first manuscript, Goldilocks Has Chicken Pox, out of the slush pile.
Erin: It's true.
Ariel: Which is wild.
Erin: Yes.
Ariel: The odds of that happening. Wild. So did she publish it as-is, or was there some back and forth after she acquired it?
Erin: You know, it was pretty much as is. This was 20 years ago. So you know, but I still remember being a little bit disappointed because it was my first book. And I've been looking forward to the editing process, and she goes, “Well, we're going to start looking for illustrators now.” I'm like, wait, what? So actually, the back and forth was more about how many outfits Goldy needed once the Illustrator got on board.
Ariel: So she just absolutely fell in love with your work and she was like, let's do this.
Erin: Yeah, it was a long time coming. I waited six months to hear from any editor. I got one rejection and then I got the message from Caitlin. So that was pretty cool. And then we just jumped in, which was mind blowing. I had no idea what to expect, so I kind of thought everybody did it that way. That was not the case! Big learning curve happened after that.
Ariel: So you published with Caitlyn's imprint for Peter Easter Frog. Did you get to work with her on that project as well?
Erin: Yeah, we went full circle on it. So that was pretty fun. And in between, after Goldilocks Has Chickenpox, there was Little Bo Peep Can’t Get to Sleep. And then I submitted, you know, more and more manuscripts to her, and nothing was quite the fit until Peter Easter frog just recently came out.
Ariel: So let's talk about some of your philosophies when you were approach edits. You see those marks on the page, those suggestions. What are you looking for? How do you handle feedback and how do you keep it a positive experience for yourself?
Erin: Let's talk about handling feedback first, and, and honestly, this took me a long time to figure out, but what keeps me positive is remembering that writing is never wrong. Because here's the thing—and it might not’ve happened to you, but I'm guessing that it did: we grow up equating editing suggestions with the red marks and corrections we got on our essays and homework at school. Apologies to all of my students because I was that English teacher, by the way. Ready with my red pen. You know, it's the way we were taught to teach writing and I am as guilty as anyone.
I began to realize that it gives the students and future writers the wrong mindset. You know, we get editorial suggestions and, and even on line edits, you know, and think “oh my god, I'm wrong. They think I'm horrible,” but really, they should mean that they love your stuff so much that they want to help you get your manuscript in the best possible shape for publication. So it doesn't mean that your writing is wrong. It means that it can be polished and shine. And that's what they're there for, you know?
Ariel: Yeah.
Erin: If you think about the first drafts and your manuscript when you send it in are the clay, okay? And the clay is what we use to create the pottery. Well, you don't just take a lump of clay and fire it, you know.
Ariel: You got to beat the crap out of it first.
Erin: Yes, and sometimes you have to smoosh it down and start over. I love that. May I quote you on that? Because each one is a step towards creating that art, you know, and then hopefully you can fire it, and it becomes this treasured item that will be shared over and over again.
So it's not wrong, but you get that stuff out there, and then you work it the best you can and then we send it to someone else to help us polish it.
And as for things I look for when I read a manuscript or critique a manuscript, issues that come up all the time or word count, a hook, marketability, and aha! endings. Things I encourage authors to do before they submit are paging out your manuscript, for example, and that helps you do some self-editing.
So for the parents or the storyteller, the storytime people out there, if you've ever glumped a few pages together during bedtime storytime, you know, because the text is too long so you skip ahead and, and then you make up a little line and, and the child goes, “but you skip the part about blah, blah blah, blah, blah.” And that's really because the text is so long. Have pity on the poor parents at night or whoever's reading the story. You know, they've been through a long day and you want the parents to want read it over and over again too, and you want the kids to ask for more. So, so for fictional picture books, I would say aim for 500 words or less, and that's why I say it really helps to page out your management because sometimes we'll get much longer text. You have a 32 page picture book, right?
Ariel: Yeah, I was gonna ask that. Like, it's been, hmmm, maybe more than a decade since I took Forms of Writing for Children, but are picture books still 32 pages?
Erin: Most of the fictional ones are; some of them will go a little longer. Nonfiction’ll go longer, they have a little bit more leeway. If you're typically shooting for 32 pages, you know, have the editor say “oh, this could be longer,” but you know, you want to… you want to give them no reason to say no. Right?
You actually only have 28 pages maximum to fill since some of the pages are used for the book ends and the copyright and the title so, think about it this way: 14 spreads. Okay, and illustration spans two pages open in a book as a spread. And you don't actually have to make an actual dummy book to do this. Simply type up your text and draw a line where you think it might be, this is the first page and this is the second page. And actually, I always started this as page three, this is page four, so that you, you end up with your 28 pages. And just see where they are.
And then think cinematically, because when your manuscript is paged out, you want to be able to envision an active illustration for each page. And you'll also be able to see wow, there's like, way too much text on this page. And that will help you decide where to edit.
Other questions you can ask yourself are you using the word count to describe something seen? You know, the illustrator will take that the details, like, oh, she had red hair and green eyes and there's blue sky and orange sunlight. Unless you really need it to advance the story, you leave that to the illustrator. Those kind of things will help you save your words for your action and dialogue and make every word count.
I talked about hook, yeah? That—by the way, I have a writer's rap on my website. So feel free to go there.
Ariel: Like literally a rap, like Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg?
Erin: Of course, just like Snoop Dogg for sure. Yeah. Yeah, like Well, here we go. It goes like this. Are you ready? Are you ready? Can we… can we bore your listeners?
Ariel: Oh, my goodness.
Erin: Well, I'm not gonna do the whole thing because I want you to go and look at it yourself. [rapping] People ask me, yo, how’dja write those books? So I wrote this rap because it's harder than it looks. So you have a great idea, but you ain't Madonna. You got to hook ‘em big so the readers won't yawn’a. You gotta have a hook. You gotta have a hook! With TV, tunes, and videos, who wants to read a book? [normal] Anyway, it goes on like that…
Ariel: Oh my gosh, that's amazing!
Erin: I know. I can't believe I just did that. But I do school visits.
Anyway, you want to avoid the Once Upon a Time kind of beginning. Books need to grab your reader right away. And you need to make sure that your first line is strong enough to hook anybody from the editor to the child who's going to open that book as well.
You can hook a reader by a unique voice, a likable or fascinating character, and the use of language, humor, action, dialogue, but find a way to answer the question, How will my manuscript stand out among a pile of submissions from the very, very beginning? Some people won't turn the page, so you want them to turn the page.
The third thing I look for is marketability. And you can check this before anybody else does, and that's by mentor texts. I’m a firm believer in mentor texts.
Ariel: This is the first I’m hearing about this. What is a mentor text?
Erin: Teachers use them all the time to like, we’ll take… you'll take a picture book and it'll help you teach a certain subject. Authors can use them too by, by using them to compare to your manuscript.
So and just let me just caution you: it's tempting to use those beloved books of our childhood, you know, as mentor text, but honestly, those might not be as marketable these days. So instead, go to the bookstore. I love the library. Love you, librarians! But they don't have always have the most recent books out there.
So go to the bookstore, sit in the children's section, look for books that are like yours, but not. Study them for voice. Study them for hooks, pacing and aha! endings, and what I did it when I was first starting out was I typed them out. I typed them out, so the text looked like it was a manuscript, so that… then you can compare that manuscript with your own and see how it measures up in so many ways. It's a great way to check publishers too. It's a good research tip to find out where you might want to submit.
Ariel: Oh, yeah.
Erin: And last but not least, is the aha! ending. Wait, see what I did there? But in picture books, as well as novels, the unexpected twist or reveal at the end is really important. It takes the story to the next level. So and believe me, I've gotten this editorial comment as well.
In Peter Easter Frog, which we talked about earlier, Caitlyn Dlouhy pointed out that the ending was to sweetie sweets. And you know, I don't usually do sweetie sweet but it surprised me, and she wanted it to also be less of a sum it up up for the reader thing, which you know, completely was spot on. So we worked on making the reveal stronger because Peter Easter Frog wants to deliver eggs and meets up with The Bunny! So it worked out, it was a great point that she made, of course, and then the art by G. Brian Karas really brought it home, so...
And it has for the, you know, summing it up at the end. You know, the the key is to trust the reader. They'll connect the dots.
Ariel: Yeah, we say that a lot to our adult fiction writers, “trust your reader.” The impulse is to not trust children, because they’re children, but I don't think that's fair. I think that children are sharp and they do pick up on things.
Erin: Oh, they're way sharper than anybody gives them credit for. Their little brains are going off like crazy when they read picture books and they're connecting so many things. And you've got to trust that you've done your work. Let them reach the conclusion or the lesson or the this or that that you know, that they experience. Let them connect the dots. You don't have to go, “And the moral of the story, children, is…”
Ariel: It's okay to have a moral. It's not okay to necessarily have it like right up front.
Erin: Right. Exactly.
Ariel: Yeah.
Erin: Speaking of trust, I think it's really important to trust the editor, too, and your critique relationships as well. Fun fact: Snow Globe Wishes was an indirect result of my previous book with Sleeping Bear and editor Sarah Rockett, K is for Kindergarten. She's great. I loved how she pays attention in such great detail.
K is for kindergarten is a book I wrote for kids who are getting ready to go to kindergarten and who are also in kindergarten. So each letter of the alphabet corresponds to an activity or a part of the day that a child might experience in kindergarten. It sounds crazy, but we spent like hours emailing and talking about just certain letters of the alphabet and what might best show the pre-K and almost kinder kids what to expect. There was still so much to polish and tighten even though I knew—of course I knew—that the text was perfect.
After the book came out I got brave and asked Sarah—because I had so much fun working with her—and so I asked her if she had had a wish list for future picture books. And she actually shared it with me and I was thrilled and I mulled over her responses and the result is Snow Globe Wishes.
Not that it was an automatic yes! We still went through acquisitions and edits, but the stars aligned and I'm very grateful. And my next yet-announced holiday books also was Sarah at Sleeping Bear. We just had a Zoom meeting last week. And yes, she had lots of suggestions for my perfect manuscript.
Ariel: So then when you get your edits back in a letter or an email, how do you process them? How do you keep them organized and make sure you're hitting all of those notes.
Erin: Well, the very first thing I do is like, take a moment. I think you've heard this before on your podcast, and you know, it's best to just take a deep breath, even if you're sitting in a critique group or you know, and your wonderful critique partners are giving you feedback or you get the notes from the editor and you know, the first initial thing is to completely be defensive. But it's just absolutely so very important to be open to what they're saying. I take a step back.
It's a whole lot easier when you're doing a picture book, just let me say. I have been working on longer works and getting edits for that is like, okay, first I'll go through it for character growth, and then I'll go through it, and you go through the whole thing, but with a picture book, you can pretty much hit all the suggestions, you know, in one sitting, because it's should be only, you know, less than 500 words long.
And I don't always use all the suggestions. I say thanks. I look for the ones that resonate most with me, with that manuscript, because ultimately, it's your story. You have to learn how to trust your gut.
I mean the very first couple times I had a critique group, oh boy, I didn't know how to use the critique. And so I just took everything they possibly told me and worked it into my manuscript. And it was just a disaster. I had edited into oblivion, and the story was gone. The characters were gone, and I'm like, I thought they were helping me make it better.
Ariel: Yeah, you've got me thinking about, I watch a lot of baking shows.
Erin: Right!
Ariel: So I'm thinking about the judges on Great British Bake Off and how—
Erin: Oh my gosh, yes!
Ariel: —if you’re the type of author who really resonates with Paul Hollywood and you need that tough love approach versus the very enthusiastic and supportive crew. Yeah.
Erin: Absolutely. And they have to sit there and listen to what might have happened, you know, what their, what their reactions are, and they've put their absolute very best into this in a time-tested way.
Ariel: Mmhmm, so stressful!
Erin: No kidding. Can you imagine an author sitting there? What if there were a show like the baking show, the Great British Author Show, and you had to sit there and listen to a critique of your manuscript and really just say, Why think you! Yes.
Ariel: I can see, it is a little dry there. Yeah.
Erin: We would be… I would be a disaster. I show you my emotions on my face. Can you see them right now, my friends? They would kick me off the show for sure, I’m sure. Ha!
Ariel: And then I was curious, because you write so often in rhyme: If you have to make an edit to one line of rhyme that can change like the entire scheme for that stanza, how do you navigate that? What does that look like?
Erin: I know that people think writing in rhyme is easy, and it should seem that way if you've done it right, but it's not. I don't always get a suggestion to change a rhyme, which is, I'm very fortunate that the editor gets it and they hear the pattern. But just the other day when I was talking to Sarah, she said, you know, “That first stanza, that first line feels off to me,” and I said, I just asked her, I said, “Could you read it aloud for me so that I can hear the way you're reading it so I know how to change it?” And when she read it aloud, she went, “Oh, you know what? It doesn't? It doesn't throw me off at all.” We ended up keeping that rhyme the way it is.
But you're right, when you have to change a rhyme, it completely takes you in a different direction.
The main thing to try and make sure is that your rhyme doesn't sacrifice the story. And so a lot of times when I work with people who are working in rhyme, I actually have them have somebody completely who's never seen it before read it aloud to them, so that they can hear it first and, once again, self-edit. You know, if I had you read something of mine that you'd never seen, you know, I'll hear when you're… when you stumble, you know, where you kind of read it differently than I would, you'll hear the scansion, pattern, and the rhythm of the sentences, and you'll hear if the rhyme is forced anywhere. So a lot of those things you can do ahead of time so that when you do submit, it actually is pretty solid rhyme.
Ariel: It's funny to me how many editing issues can be solved by just reading aloud.
Erin: Absolutely.
Ariel: It's like that one weird trick.
Erin: And it's kind of fun too, because when you do have to change a rhyme at the end, it might take you in direction that you hadn’t thought about before. And it might throw in an interesting character or obstacle just because the rhyme has to change, so you have to be willing and open and like to rhyme.
I did want to mention that that sometimes your book maybe doesn't need to rhyme.
Ariel: Yeah.
Erin: Sometimes I try and if it's not working in rhyme, although most the time those stories pop out in rhyme in my brain, but for example with Dear Earth From Your Friends in Room 5, it's told in friendly letters between Room 5 and the earth, and I ended up using a combination of prose and rhyme text. Because I wanted to have that leeway. I wanted to have a way to differentiate the voices between the letters between the kids in Room 5 and the earth. And my thought was that Earth would be much more lyrical and better at rhyming than the kids. Although Bernard gets better as he takes over as president of the Earth Heroes Club, but ctually it worked out better to have a combo of that. Peter Easter frog is sort of a combination of prose and rhyme text.
So you know, play around with things. Don't think that it just has to rhyme because, you know, you think children's books have to rhyme, they're more fun that way, kind of thing. They're not.
Ariel: Yeah there was a children's book that I studied that was called The Interrupting Chicken and it definitely didn't rhyme but it was hilarious and it was fun and it had some unexpectedness.
Erin: Right, unexpectedness is wonderful, wonderful in children's books. I remember that one. That's a great one.
I kind of… there's an interrupting part in Peter Easter Frog. You can kind of sing the book if you want. So it's: “Here comes Peter Easter Frog, hopping down his favorite log. Hippity Hoppity, Easter's on its—Hey! You’re not the bunny.” And then they talk about, they have a little dialog, and then you go back to: “There goes Pete with all his friends. Is this where—” you know, whatever. So there's interrupting in a book too. And that's always I mean, you know, kids love that good stuff.
Ariel: So you mentioned Dear Earth, and so my take on it is it's sort of this environmental love letter.
Erin: Yes!
Ariel: And it includes real science in it. So did any surprises come up with fact-checking? Did you get any help for that?
Erin: Yeah, absolutely. That was the surprise, that was that—and delightfully so—that we actually worked more on the back matter of the book and the book jacket than we did on the story. And that was good because you know, my editor Tamar Mays brought in a science expert, who is Melissa Stewart, who actually is a fabulous nonfiction author herself. So I was absolutely thrilled to have her help us. And she made sure, she went through that background or with a fine-tooth comb, and she helped me make sure I got the terms right, you know, and that they were politically correct, and that we were using them the way kids would be learning them at school.
And then there was Tamar. Tamar was very, very good at reminding me that—I mean, this information is about climate change, right, but, but you can't just present it like it's all doom and gloom. It could very well be, but who wants to read a book about that? Especially when you’re a kid. So we worked really hard on keeping the information, even the back matter, very hopeful. I mean, the last thing you want is for readers, young or old, to lose hope, right? Yeah. So the goal was to, to write it so it empowered everyone to, you know, all of us to do our part.
And then with the book jacket, the book jacket for Dear Earth, in keeping with reusing and repurposing, I'm so excited because the book jacket reverses to become a poster about how to be an earth hero all year long. And we worked on editing that.
Ariel: Oh, yeah.
Erin: Yeah. Because there are activities for each month all year long. And, you know, I'm the California kid so I had composting as an activity to do, I think it was in November. Tamar goes, “I'm in… I'm on the East Coast, and my compost bin is a frozen block of ice right now. So we'll need to move that activity to the spring.”
Ariel: That’s a challenge, looking at all the different regions.
Erin: Right, right.
Ariel: Yeah.
Erin: Yeah, yeah, it was a whole different way of looking at things and the editing, and I really truly did want to get the science right because you know, hello, that's the whole point is to get us all looking at what we can do that might work or help our wonderful home Earth. So.
Ariel: Yeah. Well, let's move to the questions that I ask every author I talk.
Erin: Aha! Okay.
Ariel: First, what do you hate about the editing process?
Erin: Waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting, you know, this is a hurry up and wait business, right? You know, you send your manuscript and you wait for editor responses. You wait for the critique pals to get back to you, you know, you wait for that, yes, you know, that contract that will turn into more editing and definitely more waiting.
You know, I just get excited about a project. And so it's like the kid in the school, you turn in your essay and you want to know what you got on it, like, that day. Waiting is such a huge part of the process. And I get it completely, especially now. I mean, everyone is backed up and this whole chain of supply, everything is backed up. So I get it, but it's still hard. So, what I do is, is my solution is just to work on another project. Which is how I started writing screenplays. So yeah, but waiting is the hardest part, I think. Yeah.
Ariel: And then what's the most common bit of feedback you've received on your writing?
Erin: I get different feedback for each of my picture books because I think I write all over the map, but in my longer work—I have a middle grade novel on submission and a few YA novels that will get there someday—but I have to be careful I don't overpopulate my cast of characters. And I blame this on my work as a theater director. I work at a fine arts camp every summer and I have the challenge of writing or finding a script that'll give 35 theater kids per week a relevant, challenging, fun theater experience and the maximum amount of stage time. So in my novels, I think you've probably heard this before, guess what? I have to kill a lot of my darlings.
Ariel: Or, you know, just combine them. Take those aspects you love about them and put them all into one character.
Erin: Yes, yeah.
Ariel: They still get to live. There's just fewer of them.
Erin: Right, right. But I mean, I have this novel that's about some high school kids putting on a play. So there were all the high school kids and then there were all the parts they were playing. Probably had 24 characters in this novel. My critique partners are going, “So, we can't keep track!” So yeah, I had to kill a lot of those darlings. And I combined what I could, and then you just have to know which ones are moving the plot forward and which ones are just kind of taking up space.
Ariel: Do you have any last words of advice?
Erin: Have fun. See the editing process as creative problem-solving, not as something that means you're wrong, or, you know, you're a terrible writer, or whatever, and I'm gonna say it over and over again, but I'll say it again here: writing is never wrong. Okay. Writing is the clay that will help you make your masterpiece. So yeah, that's my advice. Have fun.
Ariel: Well, the last portion of our program is a Hot and Wholesome Gossip Corner. Are there any other writers or creators doing something you're excited about? Any shoutouts you want to give or people you want to lift up?
Erin: Absolutely. And once again, I have a list a mile long but here are a couple of them. Sarah Scheerger, who's the author of books like Operation Frog Effect and Mitzvah Pizza. And Ernesto Cisneros, who wrote Efran Divided, that was the Pura Belpre award winner recently, and Ernesto his upcoming novel’s called Falling Short. And they are two of my wonderful middle grade beta readers, and I could not be working on that project without them.
I'd also like to give a shout out to my critique group. We call ourselves the PBJs, the picture book jammers. And those are Patricia Newman, whose most recent is Planet Ocean. And Laurie Mortensen's recent book is, Arlo Draws an Octopus. And Bitsy Kemper, who will get there soon, I promise you.
And then a shout out to my pals, and then 2021derfuls there. It's a great PR support group of picture book authors who had projects this year, and, and we have had so much fun we're now changing our moniker to the 2021derfuls and Beyond so we can keep going.
And a shout out to you my friend because this is awesome. And I love that you're, you're putting these podcasts out there. They're very fun and very informative.
Ariel: Oh, thank you! Well, if you want to check out Erin’s work, you can go to her website ErinDealey.com Or follow her on Twitter and Instagram is @ErinDealey. Teachers can request her as a guest for Zoom visits, and she's totally about that.
Erin: Tada!
Ariel: And, Erin, are all of your picture books still available from our listeners’ favorite indie stores, or only the three or four most recent ones?
Erin: You know, I'm happy to say that all of them are still in print. I know right? So yeah, you can go on my website. And check out the books there and see links to indiebound to order them.
Ariel: That's amazing. All right, well, thank you so much for talking with me, Erin.
Erin: Thank you. This was great fun, and my you-know-who, the canine part, was very well behaved right here at my feet. So yay.
Ariel: Extra treatos for Charlie.
Erin: Right, right. Thanks. Thanks to everybody who stuck with us till the end of this podcast.
Ariel: If you loved this episode of Edit Your Darlings, why not share it with a friend? Remember to rate and review on Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast fix. For show notes go to edityourdarlings. com, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @editpodcast, or I'm @arielcopyedits. Until next week, cheers!