Editing

“There is no writing; there is only re-writing.” – John Updike

“This is what I find most encouraging about the writing trades. They allow mediocre people who are patient and industriousto revise their stupidity, to edit themselves into something like intelligence.”  – Kurt Vonnegut

Suzanne McConnell has worked with novelists and memorialists as an editor and writing coach for Greenline Publishing Consultants, as well as freelance. As a teacher, she estimates that she has edited over a thousand short stories from Hunter College fiction workshop students alone.  As Fiction Editor of the Bellevue Literary Review since 2006, she has edited more than 100 short stories for publication and considered over two thousand.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  • “Suzanne McConnell of Bellevue Literary Review is one of the best editors out there.  She graciously gave me detailed suggestions on my ms. and insight into the big picture.  My work is always stronger for having been in her hands.”  – Kathryn Trueblood, Take Daily as Needed, a Novel in Stories, University of New Mexico Press, 2019
  • “Special thanks to Suzanne McConnell, a fine writer, friend and instructor at Hunter College, who read the first galleys and gave fresh insights, providing better, more precise words to phrases which had become too familiar to be improved upon from within and saved me from many red pencil errors.” – Lynne Picard, The Elephant’s Rope and the Untethered Spirit: A Remarkable True Story of Healing and Hope, Robert D. Reed Publishers
  • “Thanks to Suzanne McConnell for her tireless guidance, intuitive editing, and brutal squashing of my worst indulgences.” – Scott Oglesby, Riding High, a novel