Tag Archives: Editing

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Did October Come out of Nowhere or What?


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With so many big projects from late May through early July, I almost felt like the summer months didn’t happen. I was busy enough that I always felt like I was on the brink of falling behind. And although this has been a great school year for my first grader, I feel the press of responsibilities and obligations getting ready to pull me under again.

Whenever I see my grandmother, she asks how I’m doing, and the inevitable reply is, “Busy.” I recount to her my projects – currently, a memoir for one client, an eBook for another, and a book I’m co-writing with a friend – and she asks me how I’ve gotten myself into this. “Well, I’m getting paid,” I tell her. It’s not like I’m giving my time away.

Finishing my first set of three big projects at the end of June wasn’t good enough; I immediately picked up a bunch more. It was great for the summer because the number of paying projects I took on more than made up for the substitute teaching jobs that I only get during the school year. My days were full, but I didn’t have to get up hours before dawn, didn’t have as many pressing deadlines, and could block off time for myself and still get things done.

When school started back, though, the early alarm clock became part of my routine again, as well as lots of substitute teaching, karate and t-ball practices for my elder son, preschool Sunday school, my Education for Ministry class (which comes with a 1000-page history book this year), and my recent move to assistant editor for Fiction Fix. I warned all of my clients that, while I would have plenty of time during the summer, everything would slow down once school started again. “Does that mean that I need to find someone else?” one of these clients asked. Of course not! I need the work, and I can’t leave her with her project half-done.

Even so, I’ve had less time than I thought I would. Whole weeks have slipped by without me touching some of my work, and when it was August, it was all well and good, but somehow October snuck up on me.

It comes down to time management, as usual. There are only so many hours in a day, and sometimes I don’t have more than five or ten minutes to devote to one person, in order to give time to everyone. A few days ago, I started to feel the pressure when I realized that the book I’m co-writing needs to go to the printer the last week of the month, and I still don’t have all of the material. The memoir needs to be finished before Christmas, and the eBook is set to publish in mid-December, but we’re having all kinds of technical issues with the conversion for e-devices. To get all of these things done, the only solution that I can think of is to give up some of the weekend time that I’ve tried to set aside to read and edit for myself – you know, for my sanity.

And I made this decision on a weekend when we were going out of town for a mini vacation, naturally.

On Friday afternoon, I spent an hour hunched over my MacBook, bound and determined to finish the latest chunk of the memoir. My husband took care of all the last minute details, as well as our two-year-old. I finished and called my client from the car, promising to get the material to her next week.

One of the wonderful things about freelance work is that you can do things like this – type from your house right before leaving town – but if you don’t have the discipline to do it, you could easily get sucked into your favorite TV show or lose an hour on Facebook. There’s no boss looking over your shoulder to tell you off or remind you that October, in fact, started four days ago.

And if you’re married and working freelance, it also takes an understanding spouse. Sure, it looks like I’m having a great time, sitting in my comfy glider and typing away in my bedroom slippers, but I really am working, and there is a client who is counting on me to give my best. But that understanding only stretches so far. The free time that I afford myself on weekends needs to include my husband and kids.

Cinderella's Palace at Disney World

Cinderella’s Palace at Disney World

As I write, I'm out of town with my family. My in-laws offered to take us to Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Disney World. The kids knew we were going to visit their grandparents for the weekend, but Disney was a surprise. And so worth it. It's what I consider the last hurrah before I knuckle down and get serious.

 

And, of course, I have another motivating factor (aside from keeping my clients happy): NaNoWriMo starts in less than a month, and I can’t wait to write the sequel to last year’s NaNo book. I can’t do that with all these looming projects, so October, look out! There’s going to be a whole lot of productivity going on around here.

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Words Count


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Back in the fifth or sixth grade, I had the option of writing a story for a contest. Creative writing has been a love of mine since I was old enough to write my name, so I was in. Write a story – no problem. But there was a problem, and it was the word count. No more than 200 words. I think the only reason this has stuck with me is because of how ridiculous the word count seemed. My classmates groaned about the seeming impossibility of creating a story, no matter the length. To me, however, the limit of 200 words shot my dream of writing a winning story dead before I could even start.

In college, when I joined my first fiction workshop, I puzzled over how to write a story that was short enough. I struggled to shrink my first one to less than 20 pages, which I knew was problematic because the instructor read each story aloud during class. The day that a woman turned in a two-page story, I wondered how in the world it would amount to anything. Surely a two-page story would hardly be worth critiquing.

It was one of the best stories submitted that semester.

Eighteen years old, and I finally learned that longer is not necessarily better.

Of course, that’s not to say that I was unaware of being brevity-challenged. I’d heard about killing your darlings. I’d also heard of taking out the proverbial axe and chisel to finesse a piece of literary art. But my approach was always to write pell-mell on the first draft, then make sure the second draft was cut down by ten percent. The problem with this technique is that my first drafts are often much too long, and cutting ten percent is not enough. And when I started writing freelance, I had to learn how to hone my skills by writing articles with word limits.

It’s one thing to write a story and know that it needs to be around a certain length. It’s another to be assigned an article and know that you will be rejected if you go over 300 or 400 words. When I started writing articles for clients, I faced this challenge. And it turns out that I can write an article, prove a point, share an idea within a small space. A good thing, too, since many people will choose not to read an article if they see it runs onto a second page.

So, what then about novels? If you read my post last week, I complained (yes, I admit it) about my latest encounter with an agent. Her assignment was to help me fix problems with my novel’s opening, but when I submitted my excerpt to her with a note about how long my young adult manuscript was, I didn’t expect her to critique the novel’s length. But that’s just what she did. Cut it down by about 40,000 words, she said.

My first reaction was to be offended. Hadn’t she heard of Twilight, Eragon – Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, for crying out loud? These books blow average word counts out of the water. Granted, the first Harry Potter book was closer to what is considered normal, so by book five, J.K. Rowling could do whatever she wanted. But still, I thought, how do young adult authors break into the publishing world with longer-than-average novels?

Of course, my goal needs to be to make my novel the best it can be. Length isn’t the only factor, but it could be the one that consigns me to the slush pile yet again. While making my manuscript the best it can be, maybe I need to pull out the old axe again.

When I started editing my novel, although cutting words was a secondary goal, I was more concerned with making it clean and clarifying scenes that had confused my beta readers. But with my number one critique from the agent being the length (and after all, she does sell novels for a living, so I kind of have to lean toward her expertise on this one), I became hyper-aware of every word. I should have been making sure that each one counted from the beginning.

As of this post, I have cut almost 14,000 words – and I’ve added two scenes and am not even halfway through the book. There’s hope for me yet. If I can cut 30,000 words and make my prose shine, maybe there’s a chance that I’ll catch someone’s attention.

So, for those of you who don’t know where to start, here are some specifics:

  • Choose your adverbs with great prejudice. Sometimes you can’t cut the adverb out and get your message across. Sometimes it means rewording a section to avoid adverb usage (and adjectives, too, but adverbs are the bigger culprit). As a writing exercise, write a scene with no descriptors at all. Challenging? You bet. You’re welcome.
  • KISS (keep it simple, stupid). If you can make your point in three words, why use ten? Are you trying to impress someone with your use of words like “anthropomorphism” and “juxtaposition”? Give me a break. Likely, you’re only impressing yourself. Make your point, and move on.
  • Read your prose aloud. This is especially important for dialogue. It’s also a great technique for discovering when you’re using the same word or phrase too often.
  • Express yourself through punctuation. Need help? Check out Noah Lukeman’s A Dash of Style. You will be amazed by how much you can say without using words at all.
  • If you haven’t already, buy copies of The Elements of Style, On Writing, and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. There are many, many others, but these will give you a great start.
  • Kill your darlings. I’m so sorry. It could be that the line you’re most proud of is the one that needs to go. Once you start, you’ll find that it’s easier to keep cutting. If you’re afraid that you’ll regret your cuts, save each revision of your work as a separate document, so you can go back and put a line back in later if you decide you’d rather keep it.
  • If you’re writing an article, make a rough outline. Although I like to be a free spirit when it comes to fiction, when writing articles, you need to have a clear direction for your key points. Then, if space allows, you can add flourishes later.
  • Give your piece a rest. If there’s no hard deadline, take a vacation and work on something else for four to six weeks. You may find that something you thought integral to your manuscript before is unnecessary.
  • Hire an editor. I’m not just trying to get more work for myself; if you are serious about making your manuscript publication-ready and feel you’re not up to the task yourself, that’s why we’re here.

These all come down to making sure that every word counts. If it doesn’t further your story or article, it’s got to go. Only then can you write a winning story in under 200 words – or cut thousands of words from your novel without compromising important scenes. I have confidence that you can, and I’m certainly going to try to do it, too.

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Step One: Write Without Barriers; Step Two: Cut, Cut, Cut!

The Editing Pen

The Editing Pen

Last week I mentioned that this week’s topic would be about “the last time you could write about whatever you wanted and not care a bit what anyone else thought about it.”

Now, unless you keep a diary that’s locked and hidden somewhere very secure – or, I suppose, if you do the same with a manuscript that you never plan to see the light of day – it is nearly impossible to write without worrying about anyone else’s opinion. I have to admit, it was a bit of a trick question.

Of course, I have attended workshops with so-called writers who were arrogant enough to think that they could write whatever and however they wanted, and any criticism from their fellow workshoppers was not worth heeding. Which made me wonder why these people signed up to begin with. To bestow their writerly beneficence on other, less gifted souls? Or to receive lots of praise and pats on the back?

As you can likely imagine, these writers got a rude awakening when they found out that their prose, in fact, was not a gift from God to the rest of us. And they had a very difficult time ever taking the well-meant critiques and applying them to the manuscripts that they thought were already perfect.

Most writers (or those of us who are realistic about our chances of publishing and actually being read) know that we have to quit thinking about ourselves at some point and consider the readers. Of course, these audiences are varied. Some may be very narrow, others broad, even all-encompassing. And though we may hate the idea of “selling out” or writing to be marketable, the fact is that if you write a young adult novel with a 60-year-old narrator – and a cast full of geriatrics with not an adolescent in sight – you likely won’t have many young adult readers. Sure, write that book if it floats your boat, but don’t expect it to find a publisher.

Now, there are always rule breakers, many of them quite famous. Elmore Leonard’s number one rule for good writing is to never open a book with the weather. So what did he do in his novel, Get Shorty? He opened with the weather (read that opening and others here.)

There are writers who break the rules because they know what they’re doing, and people applaud them for having the guts to do it – and do it well. There are others who don’t know the rules or ignore them, thinking that rules are for those unfortunate writers who don’t have “it” – you know, that mysterious something that puts some writers on bestseller lists.

These others – the ones who think that the golden prose that flows from their fingertips should never be sullied by an editor’s red pen – hamper themselves by not moving (or not moving very far, anyway) beyond the first draft. And if you read my post last November about first drafts, you know that they’re necessary, of course, in the writing process, but there is a reason they’re called “first” – you’re supposed to move on to a second and a third and however many it takes to get the job done right.

When I wrote my first drafts post, I was a little over a week into NaNoWriMo. (And if you don’t know what that is, read all about it at www.nanowrimo.org – and then participate this November!) During November, I wrote over 80,000 words and edited very little, except for those few times when I needed to go back and re-read something, and I caught an error.

I continued writing through December and January and into the first part of February, when I finally wrapped up my novel – at about 148,000 words. I knew it was on the wordy side. With a first draft, you write without barriers; it’s just you and the manuscript. I liken it to writing an email that you never plan to send. If you want to let someone know a piece of your mind, compose an email full of all the vitriol it will hold, but instead of sending it, sleep on it, and you will often find that your original email doesn’t need to be sent at all or can be toned down. The same goes for manuscripts. Much of what authors include in a first draft is backstory or info-dumping that is more for the author’s benefit than any use to the readers. When you start to edit, save your first draft in case you need to go and use some of that info later, but likely, a good portion of it will get cut.

In my first draft, my first person narrator contributed all kinds of thoughts and snarky asides that do not belong in the final version. Since the style is largely conversational, I let quite a bit of it pass, even after a couple rounds of edits. I did cut almost 20,000 words, after all, so I felt like my novel was ready to move to the next stage and be dispersed to some beta readers.

Then, last weekend, I had an unexpected opportunity. Writer’s Digest was offering what they called a bootcamp with a literary agency, focusing on the first 10 pages of a novel. All I had to do was really polish those first 10 pages and get some professional advice on how to make them even better.

When I posted my excuse of a blog last week, I had just sent off the final, revised-again 10 pages to the agent I was working with, and I felt like I had been somewhat mentally flogged. Her first assessment had been short, with one positive: I had a good handle on the language. The negatives: too much dialogue, too long (I had given her the word count for the whole novel), and too much telling instead of showing.

Well, crap, I thought. My beta readers haven’t give me any complaints like that (yet). They helped me with pacing and big content issues, but then again, they weren’t pulling a magnifying glass out on the first 10 pages only. My beta readers went in knowing that they were going to finish the book. While I can tell agents all day long that they’ll like it if they just read to the end, they know that prospective readers will likely only read a page or a paragraph or even just the opening line before they decide to buy the book – or not.

I won’t say the agent’s comments were a blow, but they were a wake up call. After getting clarification on the negatives, I saw my book through new eyes – someone’s else’s – and realized that there is a lot more work to be done. And since I love a challenge, I’m having a fun time editing – again.

So to address my own topic that I presented last week and again at the beginning of this post, the last time I wrote something without caring about what anyone else thinks was when I wrote that first draft – and every time I write a first draft. What a relief to get it all off my chest (or out of my head, as the case may be).

And, yes, I need to be true to myself and write the book that I want to write, but sometimes the book that wants to be written needs me to move out of the way a little. I need to quit thinking about what an impact the end of Part One will make and weigh every word up to that point. Maybe some (or a few thousand) of those words need to go.

And to paraphrase another agent who was so right (although it’s hard advice to swallow): sometimes that line you keep coming back to – you know, your favorite – is the line that you absolutely must cut.

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So You Want to Write a Book – Well, Now What?

William Faulkner's Underwood Universal Portabl...

William Faulkner’s Underwood Universal Portable (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


Has this ever happened to you? You’re with a group of people – let’s say a moms’ group, with everyone exchanging tips and anecdotes – and someone says, “We could write a book.”

“We really could!” someone else chimes in.

Another mom even throws in a title: “Temper Tantrum on Aisle Four – How to Survive the Toddler Years!”

Everyone laughs, and they go about their lives and forget about it. But you linger on the thought that maybe you could write a book. Then again, the idea that you don’t know how to start – and what would make your book any more special than any other, any more worthy of the New York Times Bestseller List? – is intimidating, so your idea stays an idea and no more.

On the one hand, you might be right. Everyone does have a story (or three), and some of them aren’t worth telling (and those are the ones that seem to be repeated the most). But any time you impart a nugget of knowledge to someone else who seems to get something out of it, you feel that I-should-really-write-this tug.

Nowadays, blogs (much like this one) pick up the slack. A mom blogs about potty-training her strong-willed toddler, and other moms unite behind her or take comfort that they aren’t alone in the struggle. A man loses his job but figures out how to make a living from home – and writes a great how-to post. Someone with an incredible weight-loss story posts a menu and workout routine online to help others in the same situation. Blogs are great resources, and the topics they cover are endless.

But still, there are those for whom blogging and swapping stories around the water cooler aren’t enough. The problem is that they aren’t necessarily writers and don’t know what to do. The idea persists, won’t let them go.

Sometimes for decades.

I get all kinds of mixed reactions when people find out that I’m a writer. They want to know what I write. (“Novels? How can you write so much?”) They want to know how much freelance work I can handle. (“How do you manage it with two kids?”) They marvel that I’ve actually made an occupation out of this – you know, it’s not just a cute hobby. (“You mean you edit and write for a living?”)

And sometimes they ask me, kind of sheepishly, if I can help them with something they’ve been wanting to do for years.

One such person is a client of my parents’ business and happened to mention to my mom that she had a writing project. My mother said that I’m a writer, and the next time the woman came in, I was there. I gave her my business card and promptly forgot about it. I talk to a lot of people about my services, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to hire me.

A few weeks later, to my surprise, she called. She went into great detail about this project, one that she started over ten years ago. Her kids have been encouraging her to write a memoir because she’s led such an interesting life, but she doesn’t use computers, and the woman who helped her start it has been too busy to continue.

As I talked to this woman and learned her story, I realized that there are so many people who lead amazing lives, but some of the best details will die with them. They may not have a great command of the English language, but they have stories worth passing on. It would be a shame for this woman to never see her dream fulfilled just because she’s not a “writer.” I feel privileged to help her share her bit of history with her family.

Another opportunity arose in late May. I had just published my children’s book Hero (shameless plug – buy it here!), and Peter shared it with his kindergarten class. Afterward, one of his teachers mentioned that she has always wanted to write a book but needs help.

“Sure, let’s do it,” I said before I even knew what she wanted. Hey, I had just illustrated and published my first children’s book – I was flying high and felt like I could do anything.

Her face lit up as she described her 20-year dream. She used to take her children for bike rides around Amelia Island. They would stop at interesting trees, and she would make them create stories about how those trees came to look like that. Combining her love of nature with her interest in developing writing skills in children, she wants to create a book with photos of interesting trees and writing prompts. As with her own children, kids will “Look at this tree” and be encouraged to write a story about it.

It’s right up my alley. Although I’ve never created a book like this, I must admit that I love writing prompts. I love anything that starts with a tiny seed and blossoms into a beautiful story.

I really feel that I could give her a push – much like with a child on a bike with the training wheels removed for the first time – and watch her go, but I also understand that I’ve been in the publishing world for a while now, and it’s no longer mysterious to me. If you’re not right in the middle of it, though, you might think writing a book is unattainable.

I was there once. I’ve talked about my college fiction workshop before, and the second time I signed up, our instructor Ari pulled a group of us together (the ones who were serious about getting published) and gave us the low-down on publishing. 1) It’s a competitive market that’s difficult to break into, and 2) it’s still not guaranteed to be everything you hoped and dreamed even if you do get published. What Ari suggested was that we pull our best stories together and create our own publication. And so Fiction Fix was born. With his direction, we figured out what we were supposed to do, and more than 11 years later, Fiction Fix is going strong as an online fiction journal. We’ve grown quite a bit from that group of desperate writers who just wanted to see our stories in print; now we receive submissions from all over the world.

We were lucky in that we had someone who saw our desire to write and be read and who knew just when to push us. But for those out there with the desire but no direction, no help, no idea except THE IDEA for a story or book, the task can seem daunting. But here’s the thing: if you have a book that you want to write, the only thing in your way is your own indecision. Instead of dreaming or joking about maybe writing a book some day, you need to take action.

Indie (self-published) authors are more prevalent than ever. The internet has done many wonderful things for writers, on-demand and e-publishing being two of them. And even if you don’t write, these tools and their practitioners have made publishing a much more attainable reality than it used to be.

An internet search can give you everything you need, from writers’ support groups and social networks to online book publishing to lists of freelance editors (like me!). Don’t ever assume that the person you’ve just looked up is the real deal until you’ve done some research. (I learned this the hard way, regarding literary agents – read my story here.) Also don’t assume that the big companies are your only choice. Everywhere you look, you will find writers and editors with different levels of expertise. You’ll even find local printing companies, graphic designers, and illustrators who can all help bring your book to life. These are real people with whom you can share a cup of coffee – and your dream.

But if you’d like some resources, here are some websites to check out:

  • Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace (Amazon.com’s answers to e-publishing and on demand publishing)
  • Smashwords.com (distributor of eBooks to every conceivable e-format)
  • Writer’s Digest and Writer’s Market (tips for writing and publishing)
  • LinkedIn (where professionals go to network – Facebook and Twitter are great, but if you want to connect with writers who can help you get started, I can’t think of a better place)
  • NaNoWriMo.org (Ever wonder if you could write a novel in a month? If you’re serious about this, I promise that you will have the writing experience of a lifetime.

So… do you have a story to tell?

Want to help with the writing prompt book?

Look at This Tree

Look at This Tree

The writing prompt book I mentioned is the brain-child of my friend Karen Saltmarsh. We’re going to title it Look at This Tree, and we’re looking for high-quality photos of interesting trees that could tell a story. To the left is an example from a park that I visited in Washington State. (Don’t you think there could be a secret hideout for some mythical, woodland creature under the roots?) If you have something you’d like to submit, please fill out the contact form on my Writing Services page, and Karen and I will consider your photo for her book.

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Another Project Bites the Dust

 

The setup for NaNoWriMo at home, if I need to ...

Getting ready for NaNoWriMo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This past week was the big deadline: after June 30th, the CreateSpace coupon code for two free copies of my NaNoWriMo novel would expire. As a perfectionist, I found it difficult to call my novel good enough. But then I realized that not only had a written a novel – from scratch – in just a few months, but I had also fully revised it a couple times. That’s a record for me – and quite an accomplishment, considering I’m so picky.

Now, if you’re reading this and wondering, What in the world is she talking about? What is NaNoWriMo?, I will tell you. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) comes around every November. Why November? I don’t know. You can read more at nanowrimo.org. All I know is that it’s awesome. And it’s also for crazy people. Like me. Even some really successful novelists participate in NaNoWriMo. Like Sara Gruen, who wrote Water for Elephants, and Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus.

While brainstorming my last blog of October – the one in which I would list all the reasons why my sorry butt wouldn’t participate in NaNoWriMo, yet again – I had an idea of novel-sized proportions. So I figured, What the heck? I just had a couple days to wait, so I held off until November first, then started writing like… what did I say earlier? Oh yeah – a crazy person.

A novel, as defined by NaNoWriMo, is 50,000 words. I wrote over 80,000 in November, so I “won,” but I wasn’t finished with the book. I kept at it until I finally finished in early February. Then I sat back and let it rest for a month – something Stephen King recommends (maybe I read it in On Writing – can’t remember).

When the month-long waiting period was over, it was time to start editing. I usually enjoy editing just as much as writing. Sometimes it’s the joy of discovering a detail I forgot I wrote. Sometimes I realize I really screwed something up, and I feel liked I’ve accomplished something after I fix it. And I always, always try to cut extraneous words and make the manuscript as clean as possible.

Now, I know this will sound gross, but the first draft is kind of like diarrhea of the pen (or keyboard, whatever). Many – way too many – writers leave their first drafts pretty much alone, so consider how awful it is for editors to read diarrhea-on-the-page. One of the goals of NaNoWriMo is to just plow straight through, so there’s going to be lots of crap. It’s necessary if you’re going to write so much in such a short time. But if you want to have a chance of the success that Sara Gruen, Erin Morgenstern, and authors like them have enjoyed, you have to return to that original draft and pull out your ax. After all the useless words are cut, you pull out your chisel and try to make the story as close to its intended shape as possible.

One great goal to help achieve this is another that Stephen King recommends (which I read in the same place as “wait  a month”): he says to cut the manuscript by 10%. I have tried this with other novels and short stories – always to no avail. If you haven’t figured out by now, I’m wordy. I mean, I almost always break the blogs-should-only-be-500-words rule. And I had new scenes that I wanted to add to my book. How in the world would I cut a 148,000-word book down to a little over 133,000? (A double-spaced page in a word processing program has 250 to 300 words, so that’s like cutting 50 to 60 pages.)

My mom's amazing cover art.

My mom’s amazing cover art.

But I did. And for once in my writing life, I surpassed my goal. A couple days before the deadline, I trimmed it to just over 129,000. I even managed to design a cover. I got the basic outline done, told my mom (who is an amazing artist) what I really wanted, and then she waved her magic wand, and BOOM! Cover, done. It’s wonderful having a talented mom.

I sell my children’s book through CreateSpace (shameless plug – buy it here!), so I knew I needed to submit my story one day early to make it through the reviewing process. Hero is an illustrated book, so I had to submit it as a PDF. Like a dummy, I assumed my novel needed to be a PDF, as well. It was only after I submitted it that I saw they would also accept .doc or .docx.

Sure enough, the morning of the 30th, I saw that they had rejected the PDF – it cut off all my pages numbers. So I resubmitted it as a .doc, then waited. And waited. I went to sleep and set my alarm to wake me a few minutes before midnight, so I could still order my copies before my coupon code expired. But at midnight, July first, my book still wasn’t approved.

Grr. By the time I woke up the next morning, the book was approved. Isn’t that how it always goes? Part of me felt like giving up and continuing to edit my book to supposed perfection. But I’m enough of a realist to know that that will never happen. The whole reason I even considered sending it to CreateSpace to begin with was because of the two free copies, but I was already planning on buying a few more. They’re not expensive, and I wanted to have something nice to give my beta readers. So I went ahead and ordered them anyway.

My books should arrive early next week. I am both excited and nervous. If you had told me this time last year that I would have a sudden brainwave and write an entire novel in just over three months – and edit it and print it for its first critique-ers within eight months – I would have thought you were nuts. I had no idea that I would love NaNoWriMo. Even though I had to write ridiculous amounts every day, it wasn’t a chore. Maybe it’s just that serendipitous magic of the right story coming to me at the right time. As is my goal every time I write fiction, I created the story that I wanted to read. My only hope that my beta readers agree and won’t give a unanimous, What was she thinking? This is terrible!

Either way, my third big project of this year is done. I’m currently living in a bit of a fiction-writing vacuum. Yes, I still have plenty to do. But at night, when the kids are in bed and I’d usually be revising, I sit around and think, What do I do now? It’s hard to adjust back to a normal life, whatever that is.

There is, however, one consolation. I know that when my beta readers get done – even if their comments are miraculously positive – I’ll have my work cut out for me again. And I look forward to that day.

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Weeding

biltmore garden peace rose

Biltmore Garden Peace Rose (Photo credit: zen)

For the first time in our married lives, Thomas and I have a house, and we love it. I could write a blog just about all benefits of living in a house versus living in a condo, one of the biggest being that my kids now have a fenced yard where they can play in safety. But with that yard comes one drawback: yard work. Of course, Thomas says that’s why we have two boys, but since one of them still tries to cram dirt into his mouth every time he goes outside, it’ll be a while before we can turn that duty over to them.

My least favorite part about lawn upkeep is weeding. I did enough of that as a teenager to make me swear off the practice for the rest of my life. If ever I had a house, I promised myself that a yard man would be included in the budget. As I often do, I spoke too soon. And it seems that our lawn, more than any other, is mostly composed of weeds. My husband set aside an afternoon for working in the yard last week and said he filled two of those big, black garbage bags with weeds, and when he surveyed his handiwork, he didn’t know if anyone else would be able to tell he’d done anything. Part of me thinks, Just mow it. Mow those suckers down, and get it over with. This, however, is only a temporary solution. The roots are all still there, and they’ll pop up again in no time.

As I struggled with one of those nasty weeds—you know, the kind you have to dig down about seven feet to really get—it struck me that I actually weed all the time. It’s something I’ve been doing for years. I’m an editor.

This weekend I’m finishing weeding my own book. It’s almost ready for the presses! Ha. I know if I’m lucky enough to find an agent, the next step will be another thorough edit. It doesn’t matter how well I think I’ve done, there will always be something that can be tweaked just a little bit. I know the yard analogy isn’t one hundred percent accurate, but think about it this way: how many people plant a garden, stand back, and never lift a finger again? Same thing goes for writing. If someone had been foolish enough to publish my book after I finished the first draft, not only would my publishing career have died right there, but the book would have looked like a kindergartner’s half-tended bean sprout with a compost heap in the middle of it, not the Biltmore gardens. (Not saying that it’s reached Biltmore quality yet, either, but it’s a heck of a lot closer.)

And just as there are people who love to get outside and dig their fingers into the dirt, stir up earthworms, and toil the day away, there are those like me who would rather pay someone else to do it. I can say that I feel a sense of accomplishment and pride when the job is done, but I am also not brave enough to start a flower garden or do anything artistic, for that matter. We have grass. End of story.

With writing, however, I do like to get my hands dirty. I don’t mind mentally sweating. I love the initial outpouring of the story, too, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing like having a brainwave, sitting down, and getting it on paper. But it’s a different kind of fun to go back through it, pruning and weeding and clipping a choice blossom to display in a prominent place, where others can see my accomplishments. Some people hate this part. They would rather mow. This scene isn’t working? Just get rid of it. But in the process, while many problems might be solved by such a drastic approach, some of the good stuff is lost, some really small but glaring mistakes are left to grow up between the cracks, and it’s obvious that the writer hasn’t learned much. The only growth is of the wrong kind: overused artistic license, misplaced apostrophes, passive voice popping up at the worst possible times.

Editing isn’t glamorous, whether you’re an editor by trade or just revising your own work. While authors often thank their editors, the readers don’t know who these people are. They’re largely invisible, but if they do their job right, the work is invisible, too. Or, I suppose a better way to say it is that their work is seamless. A badly edited piece is, on the other hand, painfully conspicuous. I’ve read many wonderful books that were full of some of the worst typos I’ve ever seen. Typos that would not be forgiven if I were to submit a manuscript in such a state. And these are big-name authors with bestselling books. I would be embarrassed to work for those publishing houses that put out books like that. (In fact, I’ve often thought, Note to self, don’t ever go with that publisher.)

Take the time to edit. Take the time to learn the rules before you submit, and then go back and make sure you followed them. Or, if you don’t have the time or really need help polishing your writing, we editors are waiting for you to call on us. Your name will still be on the cover of the book, and it really is your garden, anyway. We’ll just make sure that when others stop by to admire it, there aren’t any weeds choking your roses.

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From Muse to Masterpiece

Writer Wordart

Photo credit: MarkGregory007

When my muse inspires me to write, why can’t I put onto paper exactly what comes into my brain and just have done with it? Why isn’t it brilliant the first time? I wouldn’t even mind the process taking a while if I could trap the thoughts and phrases mentally until I’m ready to sit down and transcribe them verbatim. That never happens, though. I can’t tell you how many of my stories fizzled out because I had a great idea, but when I finally had the time to write, I’d either lost every bit of passion for the story, or my attempts were feeble in comparison to what I thought was in my head.

This week, I thought about writing a short story, which in itself was weird. I never think of anything less than novella-length, unless I’m commissioned to do so. But I was stimulated, I think, by an invitation for submissions from Glimmer Train. I don’t have anything for them, I thought. Then—BAM!—short story, fully formed, in my head. And on Monday, of course, when I was so stupid-busy that all I had time to do was take notes on my iPhone during the red lights on my daily commute.

That night and the next, it was all I could do to type a few scenes and details that I didn’t want to forget. Then Wednesday I had time (well, I actually stole an hour from my sleep) to poise my fingers over the shallow keys of my MacBook and type away until the whole thing was out of my head. I forced myself to keep at it, even when I didn’t know how to transition from one scene to another. I finally finished, and I even proofread it, something that I often leave for later, exhausted by the initial output of imagination onto the page.

What I’ve discovered from participating in fiction workshops and reading hundreds of submissions for the online literary magazine Fiction Fix, is that many writers stop there. They might not even proofread, or if they do, their skills are so poor that it doesn’t do much good. And while I understand that you might need to take a break to regain enthusiasm, a first draft does not equal a finished piece.

According to Laura Cross’s The Complete Guide to Hiring a Literary Agent, agents only accept one percent of submissions (27). Now, you don’t have to have an agent to be a good writer, but if you’ve received rejections before, from agents, literary mags, or publishers, consider the following statistics about submissions sent to agents: “87 percent of content is considered amateurish and unpublishable” and “3 percent has a potential market but is poorly written or researched” (28). Nine percent have problems marketing or target markets that are already saturated, or they might have potential but need revision. Only “1 percent is considered well written, promising, and ready to be presented to a publisher” (28)

Why do so many writers assume that their stories are worthy enough to send to magazines and agents and publishing houses? I’ve workshopped with people who could take zero criticism. If a room of other writers had issues with their stories, it was because we couldn’t read them properly, not because there were problems with those stories. Well, I guess that could be the case, but if your goal is to sell a book, the public won’t buy it if they can’t understand it.

As an editor as well as a writer, I am not only ready but excited to correct, revise, polish. I seek critiques and opinions from fellow writers and readers, and I’ve developed such a tough skin that you could take a hatchet to my literary arm, and I wouldn’t bleed (well, not much). It is not only necessary but fun, to me, to watch the lump of raw story as I mold and shape it into (I hope) a masterpiece.

The stories and books that you read and enjoy, that make you wonder how the author was able to work such a complex twist into the ending, took a lot of a hard work to create. It is extremely rare (if it happens at all) for someone to write a story that needs little revision. If Madeleine L’Engle, who had already published several novels, received a decade of rejections before she published A Wrinkle in Time, it is only reasonable to assume that your writing will need considerable work before it garners the positive attention you desire. Join writers groups. Read anything you can get your hands on. If grammar and spelling aren’t your strong suit, seek a teacher or professor who can help with your manuscript. If you can afford them, go to conferences, workshops, and look for independent editors who have edited writers you admire. And when you’re ready, pull your literary ax out of you writer’s toolbox, and begin hacking away at the extraneous stuff that gets in your story’s way. When you’re done with that, pull out your chisel for the fine-tuning. Even though it takes considerable time and effort (during which you won’t feel very profitable), you can make yourself into that one percent to out-do your writing competition.

I guess if I’m going to take my own advice, I need to roll up my sleeves and get to work.