Experiences with Editors

[Alyssa Miranda]

This is my first post in about two months, after taking a break to work on a novel-like, fictionalized memoir, which I'm still hard at work on. A friend having a story to tell similar to mine asked me to look at her manuscript. It needed work - lots of it, and as diplomatically as I could, I suggested it could benefit from editing. The next question was, could I recommend an editor? Having never used one (the memoir I'm working on is my first real attempt at writing), I couldn't, but said I would research who might be a good choice online, which brings me here. The editing needed I would characterize as "heavy" - adding, deleting material, restructuring, making the writing livelier and more colorful, etc., in contrast to "light" editing - correcting typos and bad grammar, but basically leaving the writing unchanged. The responses to my previous posts were very helpful, and as before, from those of you who have used or heard good things about an editor, I would appreciate hearing of your experiences - how much the editor charged for the kind of editing I've described, and did you feel the editing was worth it? Thanks in advance!