A Praise Song to Human Editors

Will Chatty GPT ever learn to edit itself?

As I wrote in my last post, AI is extremely chatty. Any writer who’s received one of those spam messages urging you to connect with a famous author or get a book promotion package you never requested, will see that the fulsome praise of your work can take an entire page not to mention minutes of your precious time. Recently, I got an invitation from an AI generated scam focused on editing my published picture book Lucy and Henry Are Twins. The scam email is 144 words longer than the entire text of the book including the title. (How and why I would want to edit a published book is a mystery to me.)

I have been publishing traditionally for (eek) fifty years and through all those decades, I have been both challenged and supported by dedicated editors who love stories and readers, and who have spent their lives making good books better.

I sent my most recent manuscript, the fourth in my series that began with The Castle in the Attic, to Margery, the editor who has worked with me on the series from the beginning and who is a talented and prolific children’s book writer herself.

Margery knows all my quirks and with great patience, she points them out to me every time. She and I both prefer the penciled line edit to a digital program, so here is a sample of one of the more lightly touched pages.

I use the words just and even too often. I repeat words usually in the same paragraph and occasionally, in the same sentence. She cuts my unnecessary explanations, my long descriptive passages, and urges me to replace pronouns with the characters’ names. She is alert to my continuity issues. (Ex. See p. 88, line 8. William knows that Tolliver is not around.)

But more than that, she is attuned to what I’m trying to achieve in the story and how best to help me realize it. As every good editor knows, the way to get a writer back to the page with a sense of energy and excitement is first and foremost to tell them what they are doing right, what in the manuscript is working. I happen to love the revision process because I know it’s my opportunity to get closer to my original vision for the book. Once I’ve taken the time to absorb what she is saying, Margery’s editorial letters always send me back to page one with enthusiasm.

Every experienced writer knows that we are our own worst editors. We fall in love with our characters, our settings, our descriptions and when we type THE END on the bottom of the page/screen, there is a feeling of such joy and achievement that we have little objectivity left. That’s why I try to take weeks if not months away from the book to let it rest. With time off and the help of an editor like Margery, I’m able to see my work more clearly and cut more drastically so that the story moves as swiftly as it needs to do in this age of short attention spans.

Will AI replace the human editor? Many feel it already has, but I’m not one of them. AI is a mathematical tool without conscious awareness, an inner life or lived experience. Those are the qualities I look for in the editor casting her eye and wielding her pencil over my hard won words.

Thanks to prolific writer Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop for sharing her daily writing rhythm!

February 9, 2026 No Comments

My Daily Writing Rhythm

How to keep the characters moving in my head and on the page

Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop (www.elizabethwinthropalsop.com) is the author of over 50 works of fiction for adults and children under the pen name Elizabeth Winthrop. These include the award-winning fantasy series, The Castle in the Attic and The Battle for the Castle as well as the short story, The Golden Darters, read on the nationwide radio program, Selected Shorts, and included in Best American Short Story anthology, and Island Justice and In My Mother’s House, two novels now available as eBooks. She is the daughter of the acclaimed journalist, Stewart Alsop. Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies, a family history about her parents’ love affair during World War II and their marriage lived in the spotlight of Washington during the 1950s was published by Regal House, October 25, 2022.

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This post is from Elizabeth’s Substack January 25th newsletter,:

When I speak at writer’s conferences, I often get the same questions from beginning writers. Do you write with a pen or a computer? Do you write in a journal? Do you write at the same time every day? Where do you write? I know people in the audience are hoping to uncover some secret method, some trick I’ve discovered or invented that would unlock their unconscious so that the words flow and the characters dance off the page beckoning to them to follow.

Every writer be they published or just starting out would answer these questions in a different way. My writing day and schedule has changed over time, but I’ve discovered that committing to writing every day is the most important “trick.” So, for now, here’s my schedule. I wake up and play a number of word games to prime my brain. Then breakfast and a ten minute drawing practice with Wendy McNaughton to push me in different directions. Drawing helps me to see more clearly what is right in front of me and that can only help my descriptive powers.

Although I don’t live in a large apartment, I am lucky enough to have two separate spaces for my work life. The first, a desk 10 inches from my bed, is where I do the administrative work that a published writer must not neglect. It is here that I check royalty statements, answer appearance requests, develop marketing and publicity materials, read through contracts, answer emails from fans, my entertainment lawyer, my editors, etc. My second space is a 6 X 10 foot nook where I keep all my research books, art that inspires me, my journals and an extra card table to spread out file cards on characters, plot twists, settings. I try to keep that as my pure writing space.

The painting above my desk is of an island and I’ve written more than one book about islands. Part of the novel I’m working on is set on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, a mystical place on the northeast coast of England that I’ve visited to do research. Beneath that, a picture of two characters who showed up in one of my books and who keep coming back. Upper right you’ll see a charcoal drawing of my father, a journalist and memoir writer, who was my first inspiration.

Stewart Alsop at an indeterminate age. Charcoal drawing by an unidentified artist found in our mother’s basement.

Upper left is a cartoon by James Stevenson, the celebrated New Yorker artist who was inspired by my father and uncle . The bookshelf holds my daily handwritten journals and books that inspire and instruct me. And yes, knitting supplies. I’ve found that when my fingers work the needles, my brain works on plot.

Lately I’ve been hearing the term, third space. First your home, then your work and one other. Since both my home and my office are under the same roof, I often go out to my favorite coffee shop which I call my third space. I put on noise deadening headphones, hook into my Gregorian Chant playlist (my current novel is set in the 14th century), write first in my journal and then turn to the half finished sentence, the last thing I wrote the day before. In that crowded, noisy place, my characters meet me and carry me away to their world.

This is the schedule and rhythm that works for me. What is yours?

Follow her newsletters on Substack.