I am increasingly coming to believe that there is no need to separate my life into neat little compartments. In fact, one talent feeds into the other, and they both benefit from me being in a "good place", whether that means I have enough editing to pay the bills, or I am getting to create often enough that I feel happy and contented.
More and more I am hearing about friends with "portfolio careers" - where they have no one single shining talent, but rather a suite of abilities that may or may not complement and enhance each other. I always held that my editing and my creating were separate and that one did not really feed into the other but that's simply not true.
I work as an author coach, which means that I help and support an author as they work on their manuscript. We take their first draft (or, at least, the first draft that they were willing to share with anyone), and together we explore it and finesse it and bring out the vision that prompted them to set pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) in the first place. In some ways it is like taking the vision in my mind's eye of the piece of jewellery I want to create, then building it up step by step until I have something in front of me that resembles that initial vision. At that point I might seek feedback from family and friends, and then I will sand it and polish it and turn it into something I am proud of and willing to put on public display.
So what I want to do here is to say that I am an editor and a creative, and that those two things can coexist. More than that, they can support and enhance each other. So bring me your manuscripts, your craft books and your stories, and I will help you craft them and polish them and sculpt them until they resemble the work of art you first imagined. I will do so with the utmost care, in exactly the same way I treat my jewellery.
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