A monthly note on the real work — the book I am publishing, and the manuscripts I am editing. Client names and details are kept private; what I share here is what my work was like this month.
In October 2026, my book Synchronicity in Grief: Reconstructing Meaning After Loss came out. I also had two dissertation edits finish up on the same Tuesday, a third came aboard in the last week of October and ran straight through to the end of the month, and a client passed her defense. Dissertation season is still in full swing.
When I read back through my work journals, the thing I explained most often this month was not a comma rule or a citation format. It was what the comments in a returned file are for. These are called author queries. I will come back to that.
The book
Synchronicity in Grief (Routledge) was released in print and via e-book on October 19. I wrote about that day, and about the whole path from a dissertation to a printed book, in the release-day post. The hardcover had already reached my house on the 13th, six days early, and I wrote about the odd, quiet stretch before that in The Strange Month Between Pre-Order and Publication.
I sent hard copies to the people who participated in the study. The posts I put up on LinkedIn brought comments and messages all month, and one reader wrote to say their library had bought a copy, which may be the nicest thing anyone can tell an author. An invitation also came to present the book’s findings to a community group next year, so I have started to think about how a book becomes a workshop.
It takes a village to raise a book. In October the village was the production team that got it out the door on time, the booksellers who stocked it, and the readers who told me where they found it.
Dissertations and manuscripts
Two edits closed on Tuesday, October 13. The first was the dissertation that had been moving through its queries in batches since September. The author answered a set, I folded her answers into the master file and sent back a clean copy with only the open questions still in it, and we traded files that way until there was nothing left to ask. Then came the final proof, a change log, a style sheet, and a feedback letter. She was thorough and gracious about every batch, and when it was done she said kind things about the work. I posted her testimonials on my Reviews page.
The second was the dissertation I delivered in August that had been waiting on its university’s review. The author’s revisions came back to me, and I corrected the errors the new revisions had introduced, ran the university’s internal checklists, did a final proof, rebuilt the table of contents, the tables, and the figures. About 27 hours in all. Two weeks later she passed her defense, and she has recommended me to the cohort coming up behind her, which is the best review there is.
“What truly sets Jennifer apart is her compassion and humanity. She takes the time to understand the unique challenges and pressures that come with academic writing, providing invaluable emotional support in addition to her editorial expertise.”
— Dissertation Student, from my Reviews page
The third dissertation came aboard in the last week, and fast: a first email on Friday the 23rd, a free sample edit and an estimate the same day, terms agreed on Saturday, and the edit under way Monday morning in four-hour blocks. By Friday it was running ahead of its schedule. A first pass on a dissertation of that length produces tracked changes in the thousands and comments in the hundreds, and most of the comments are questions. That is where this month’s lesson comes from.
The author did what most people do the first time a file like that comes back: she answered some of the questions in the body of an email, sent the file back without the replies in it, and copied her chair. Then she apologized for the mistakes in her dissertation. There is no reason to apologize; this is what editing is for. Things surface, and we work through them one at a time, together. Judgment-free zone! I would not have work if writers were not human beings prone to tiredness and mistakes. That’s why we collaborate! The confusion is mine to prevent, not hers, and I spent an afternoon at the end of the month writing a set of short client guides so that the next person opens a returned file knowing exactly what to do with it.
Two smaller changes from the desk. I have stopped offering a three-tier menu of editing options; there is now one full-service edit, scheduled day by day, and clients choose how to pay for it: in one payment, in two, or monthly over six months with no interest. And a new Defense Prep page is up, alongside an editor’s pre-defense checklist on the blog, for anyone whose defense date is on the calendar.
I also spent a morning repairing a university’s dissertation template so that its headings, contents pages, and lists behave the way a style office expects them to. Nobody paid for that morning, and it should save every student who uses the template a few hundred dollars in editing. I felt bad that those students were writing on a broken template and should not have to pay for something that was not theirs to control. So I fixed the template for the entire university for free. (I was also tired of doing the same repetitive work over and over for each file.)
Coaching and the dissertation-to-publication series
The clinician I have coached for a few years asked me to edit a conference presentation this month: a short job, and a happy one.
And I started something I had been planning since the summer: a blog series on what to do with a dissertation once it is defended, written from my own reading notes on the books about it. What to Do With Your Dissertation After You Defend went up on October 9, Your Dissertation Is a Treasure Chest on the 15th, and on the 30th Turning Your Dissertation Into a Book, which uses my own path as the worked example: one dissertation that became two conference papers, a book chapter, a journal article, and a book. The series continues next Monday.
Editorial work
On the transpersonal psychology special issue on grief, a copyedited manuscript went back to its author with a change log and a style sheet, a revision plan went to the authors of another, and I completed a review of a resubmission. I also finished a peer review for another journal.
What October taught me
Most of what comes back in an edited dissertation is a question, not a correction.
An editor working through a file is not only fixing it. She is reading it more closely than anyone else ever will, and every place where two readings are possible, or a source cannot be found, or a term has drifted since chapter 2, becomes a comment. The number of comments measures how closely I read, not how well you write.
So here is what I now tell every client when a file comes back. Reply inside the comment; one line is enough. If you want different wording, type it in the reply and I will place it. Do not accept or reject the tracked changes, and do not edit a separate copy. I hold the master file, so that every change is checked against your university’s requirements and APA style and nothing new slips in unseen.
The patience of publishing.
If you are somewhere in this process
If you are trying to work out whether your manuscript is ready for an editor, the free Are You Ready for Editing? quiz is a good place to start. You can also read about my editing services or book a free strategy call for an assessment of where your document actually is. If your defense is coming up, Defense Prep is new this month.
Last month’s update is here: From the Editing Desk — September 2026.
Warmly,
~Jennifer