With Jesse Steele

First of all, Peter Gelfan is not a magician.  You might believe so after reading some of the testimonials written about his editing work, but his abilities to pull a rabbit out of a hat or make the Statue of Liberty disappear are still unproven.  While that might make Peter a poor candidate to entertain at a child's birthday party, at the Editorial Department we are ecstatic to put the nearly two decades he has dedicated to editing, ghostwriting, and generally making good writing great to quality use on our client's manuscripts.

JS: What do you do when you’re not writing or editing?

PG: Not much. (Laughs) Photography. I’ve often thought I’ve learned more about writing from photography than I have from books about how to write. It’s the same idea. You’re taking a picture of a particular thing for a specific reason, not just snapping away. You include the elements around it that support the image and the idea. You frame and selectively focus to eliminate all the things that don’t support the picture or might distract from it.

PG: I did a lot of things before I came to editing, but my first experience with it was self-editing. I traveled all over the world when I was younger, and I started to realize that the world was changing around us and that some of the things I’d done—like hitchhiking through Iran and Afghanistan—were just not possible in the same way anymore, so I wanted to record them, write them down. Not because I fancied myself a writer at all, but to record all the small, amazing experiences I’d had. So I wrote a paragraph, reread it to savor my deathless prose, and this terrible and exciting thought came to me: I could have said that better. And that’s editing. That’s when I realized writing was not just writing—that I wanted to say everything in the best way I could, and the best way probably wasn’t going to be the way I wrote it down the first time.

Years later, I finally finished writing those stories down, and a friend of mine who was a published writer and had worked with Renni Browne read them. He took my manuscript to her and she critiqued it, then she called me up and said, “I have an author who needs a ghostwriter, and you’re a good writer. Do you want to do it?” And I said yes, and it got an agent and then was published. I’ve been working with The Editorial Department ever since.

JS: Do you remember the book that made you love books, your first literary love, the first one that really grabbed you?

PG: Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. I was about 12 years old. It was funny and sad outrageous and epic all at once, something I didn’t know was possible until I read it. I read the classics in school like everyone else because I was forced to, but that was my first voluntary adult experience with a book.

JS: Here’s my funny question for the day. If you could have a superpower, what would it be?

PG: To slow time. You know when someone says something to you and you wish you had the perfect comeback but it doesn’t come to you until ten minutes after the situation is over? I would slow or stop time right then, just long enough to think it through. Or stop myself from saying the things I wish I hadn’t. Think of how cool that would be, to be able to edit your life as you go. You can’t go back and edit your life like you can a manuscript.

JS: Do you consider yourself a “New Yorker”?

PG: That’s a funny question. I suppose most people would consider me a New Yorker—I was born here and grew up very nearby and have lived here on and off my whole life—and I feel at home here. I have felt like an outsider most other places I’ve lived. But I don’t know exactly what that question means. I think the stereotype of the aggressive, rude New Yorker is outdated. I don’t find people here rude at all. Straightforward and loud, yes, but people are really polite on the streets here, and you hear please and thank you everywhere. It’s more like “Hey, buddy, couldja pass me that ketchup? Yeah, thanks.” But it’s polite all the same.

For more information about Peter Gelfan, visit his bio page, where you can learn more about his preferred genres and read testimonials regarding his work.  If you're interested in working with Peter on your project, contact us via our editor availability page.