Tag Archives: team indie

Developmental Editing and Copy Editing: What’s the Difference?

Posted on April 17, 2012 | 5 Comments

There are so many writers out there these days.  Now that the world of publishing has been blown wide open and anyone can publish a book a heck of a lot more people than ever before are calling themselves writers.  And that’s great!  But I’ve been lurking around the Kindle boards and other reader hang-outs lately and let me tell you, it’s not so great to them.  Because there is a lot of half-baked material being served up as if it’s a feast.

What’s the problem?  Editing.

Oh my gosh, I can’t tell you how important editing is.  If writing a book is like throwing all the ingredients together and mixing then editing is like checking the recipe to make sure you’ve put the right ingredients in at the right amount.

I’ve heard a very large number of self-published writers out there say that they can make due without an editor.

Well you can’t.

*ducks*

At least I’m in the school of thought that says you absolutely must have your work edited by a professional before you can let it see the light of day.  There are more things that need looking at in a novel than most writers setting out on the journey realize.  And based on the comments I’ve seen here and there, there is also a misunderstanding about just what it is that an editor does.  So let’s take a look at that, shall we?

First, there are two kinds of editors.  You can’t do without either of them.

When a lot of people think “editor” they think of the person who reads through your manuscript looking for bad grammar, misspelled words, and typos.  This is a Copy Editor.  Copy editing is like making sure you don’t have broccoli in your teeth.  I, for example, am terrible at punctuating dialog.  I can’t keep it straight in my head which bits of dialog should end with a comma and which should end with a period, which bit after the dialog should be capitalized as a new sentence and which is a dialog tag.  It’s obvious when you point it out to me, but when I’m just reading through I write it all wrong.

A good copy editor knows the rules of grammar and uses them mercilessly against your manuscript.  I should have had someone copy edit The Loyal Heart a little more intensely before I published it because I had a serious ‘smirk’ problem.  Copy editors are also there to catch overuse of words.  Thankfully, self-publishing allows you to discreetly swap out a more thoroughly edited version of a novel without anyone being the wiser.  *shifty look*

Yes, copy editing is obvious and oh-so necessary.

But even more essential, in my humble opinion, is developmental editing.

A Developmental Editor is a writer’s best friend, but I bet most writers are terrified of the prospect.  I know I was before I had my first manuscript developmentally edited.  A Developmental Editor reads your manuscript and asks questions.  They peel away the layers to figure out what makes your story tick.  Or more importantly, what stops your story from ticking.  A Developmental Editor not only points out the broccoli in your teeth but asks you why you needed to have broccoli in the first place.  Maybe kale would work better?

Like I said, I was terrified when I sent my first manuscript to a Developmental Editor.  I loved that story.  I was passionate about it.  The very last thing in the world that I wanted was for someone to pick it apart and tell me everything that was wrong about it.  I chewed my nails for weeks, wondering what my editor, Alison, would say about the story.  I was terrified that she would tell me I was a horrible writer and should stick to my day job.

Well, she didn’t.  Why?  Because Alison is an excellent editor!

A good Developmental Editor, like Alison, is there to work with you.  Because there are all sorts of things that you, as a writer, can’t see when you’re so close to your work.  Think of a Developmental Editor as the sharpest reader your story is ever going to have.  If something doesn’t make sense, they will tell you.  If they think you didn’t lift a character or situation to its fullest potential, they will tell you.  If they have an idea for a different direction your story or backstory could go in, they will tell you.

LISTEN TO THEM!

Case in point:  I’m working on a western Romance, Our Little Secrets, right now.  I wrote it, and rewrote it, and revised that.  But something still wasn’t right.  I knew something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was … or wasn’t.  The time came and I sent it off to Alison.  And I waited in dread because I knew something wasn’t right.  I knew a serious critique was in the mail.

And then came my edit letter.  And yep, the story has some problems.  But guess what?  I may have known that there were issues, but Alison had a much clearer idea of what the issues were.  Her long, long, long letter of critiques read like the pieces of a complex puzzle fitting into place.  Oh!  Of course my heroine seems a little too perfect and a little too capable of handling things.  I didn’t really define what she was afraid of well enough.  And of course that potentially awesome scene fell flat.  I only depicted my hero’s shock over the turn of events, not all of the other emotions he would be feeling.  Oh!  That’s what was missing!

I don’t care how good of a writer you are, if you don’t have someone else, someone professional working with you to process your story it’s not going to be as good as it could be.  Do you know which of the Harry Potter books is J.K. Rowling’s least favorite?  The Goblet of Fire.  Why?  Because she felt as though her publishers rushed her and she didn’t have a chance to edit it as much as she wanted to.  Yes folks, even the master herself doesn’t get it right on the first draft and needs the help of editors to bring a story to its full potential.

So please, please, please do yourself and your readers a favor.  Bite the bullet, hold a bake sale, wash cars, break the piggy-bank, max out your credit cards and hire an editor.  A Developmental Editor and a Copy Editor.  You need them.  Everybody needs them.  If J.K. Rowling can do it, you can too.

Next week:  How to listen to your editor, critiques, and reviews without whining or losing your temper and becoming a better writer for it.

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Time Management for Writers

Posted on March 8, 2012 | 9 Comments

And now we come to the most slippery writing tool/technique of all….

Once you’ve got your character pics laid out in front of you and you’ve turned on your mood music you’re ready to move on to the most difficult part of all of writing….

Finding time to write.

Finding time to write feels like this sometimes

I managed to write the first draft of The Loyal Heart in about a month and a half at the beginning of 2008.  And the first draft was 250,000 words long.  I worked on it for three to five hours in the evening on weeknights and roughly eight hours a day on the weekends.  How the heck was I able to find all that time do to it?  Well, I’ve just broken up with a serious boyfriend, I was getting over months of crippling depression in which I’d managed to push all of my friends away, and I had no extracurricular hobbies or interests at all.  In other words, I had no life outside of Aubrey, Crispin, Jack, and Ethan’s lives.

I’ve also heard, as I’m sure you have too, that a writer’s life is a solitary life.  You know, there’s a lot of truth to that.  Generally speaking, writing is not a collaborative process.  It’s something we have to knuckle down and do on our own with as few distractions as possible.  Unfortunately, life is full of distractions.

So how do you put your Nike’s on and just do it?

I am a firm believer in the fact that part of that answer lies in the whole philosophy behind NaNoWriMo.  NaNoWriMo, for those who don’t know, is a yearly writing challenge hosted by The Office of Letters and Light.  Every November participants from across the globe take up the challenge to write 50,000 words or 50,000 words worth of a larger story before the end of the month.  The trick to winning NaNoWriMo is to write a little bit each day.  It doesn’t matter if that little bit is any good.  The point is to write it.  If you do the math it comes out to about 1,666 words per day.

In other words, the key to getting something written is to set yourself a word count goal for each day.  When I’m drafting a story I set myself a word count goal of 2,000 words.  Secretly in my mind that’s actually 2,500, but if I make it to 2,000 I’m happy.  I do a pretty good job of sticking to this goal.

But time.  I still haven’t created more hours in the day for us all to work.

Ah, see, that’s the thing.  I’ll confess right now that I haven, in fact, done most of my writing while at work.  The company I work for had a bit of a slow period, and since there wasn’t a ton of other stuff to occupy my time and mind I wrote.  I wrote a lot.  So does this mean I got paid to write?  Mmm, maybe.

Then all those nasty layoffs happened.  In the last month and a half I haven’t had time to breathe at work, let alone write.  And yet here I am grinding my way through revisions of a delightful little historical romance that takes place in Montana in 1895 called Our Little Secrets.

How do I have time to do this?

I ask myself that same question all the time.  But really the answer is all about sacrifices.  If you’re a writer you have to give up a few things for your art.

I stopped watching television (live) on December 21, 2007.  I knew I was going to start writing soon and I also knew that television was a major distraction for me.  Watching TV was also something I did with my ex-boyfriend and as we were about to enter an election year the very last thing I wanted to do was sit through political commercials.  So really I had several reasons for quitting the boob tube.

The end result, though, was that without “my shows” tying me down I had hours and hours to write.  Believe me, cutting out TV made an incredible difference.

And I hate to say it, but when it’s time for the rubber to hit the road, when you have something you absolutely must write, whether by your own dictate or because you have an editor dangling a deadline in front of you, gone are the yoga lessons, the coffees with friends, and the long chats with family.  Say goodbye to nights out at the movies, videos from Netflix, and rolling around with the cats.  When that time comes, writing is not just your job, it’s your life.

I wish I could remember who it was recently that said to aspiring and indie authors these magnificent, oh-so true words:  The habits you develop when you are just starting out will become the habits you have when you are under contract with a deadline looming.  If you can’t treat this as seriously at the beginning as you would were you being paid big bucks then you’re never going to make it.  Harsh but true.

So there you have it.  My methods of time management for writing involve varying stages of doing what needs to be done to meet word count goals and sacrificing other things I like to get the damn thing done.

And now, since Our Little Secrets is due at my editor on March 26th, I’m going to stop writing blog posts and put my revising hat on.

But how about you?  How do you find time to devote to your writing?

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How I Became A Writer

Posted on February 13, 2012 | 33 Comments

Here it is, folks!  In honor of ORIGINS Blogfest (a fabulous idea created by DL Hammons which hundreds of writer/bloggers are participating in today) I present you with my origins story – how I became a writer.  Or rather how I knew I was a writer.

I’ve included the one sentence version of the story in many a bio I’ve written:  I have been a writer since I was 10 years old and realized one day that I didn’t have to wait for the teacher to assign a creative writing project to write something.  But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Three year old Merry & her Granddad

I was in third grade.  It had been a rough couple of years for me.  My dad had walked out on us when I was 6, we moved halfway across the country to live near my Mom’s family, my Granddad (who had become a beloved father figure) had passed away very suddenly of a heart attack, and when my dad remarried he took my two older half-brothers (his sons from his first marriage) away to live with him.  Trauma!  I was struggling in school that year too.  It sounds so silly to an adult, but my best friend from second grade had been put in a different classroom than me.  I also had to learn long-division, which nearly killed me.  Everything pretty much sucked far more than your average ten-year-old deserves to have things suck.

My third grade teacher was Mr. Morley.  I adored him.  One day we were given a creative writing assignment.  I don’t even remember what we were supposed to write, but I ended up writing a story about a girl who made friends with and probably fell in love with a wasp (yes, a wasp) named Michael Greer.  Now Michael Greer was a boy in my class that I had been in love with since he kissed me in first grade.  This was the first instance of me making a character out of someone I knew.  I’m sure it was also the first time I used fiction to express and work through my emotions.  There was probably some deep psychological meaning to the fact that I would write a story about myself falling in love with a wasp (I was and still am to this day completely terrified of wasps) named after a boy I had a crush on.

Well, when we did these creative writing assignments in third grade we generally read them aloud to the class after they were graded.  I still remember Mr. Morley asking to speak with me at recess.  He was very tactful about saying that while he liked my story he didn’t think I should read it aloud.  I knew what he was talking about and agreed.  Thank you Mr. Morley for helping me to dodge a bullet that would have meant third grade social suicide!  I loved him even more.

Young Merry coming up with ideas to write about

But this first critique of something I had written got me to thinking….  I had written a story and enjoyed the process of writing it, and even though I had handed it in to the teacher it hadn’t been read aloud like the rest of the class’s stories.  So that meant that not everything I wrote would have to be on display for my class.  And if I could write something for a class that then wasn’t shared, who was to say that I couldn’t then just write something for myself alone to enjoy?

That’s when I started writing.  Granted, I didn’t do it a lot, just every now and then.  Until something else coincidental and wonderful happened when I was in fifth grade.  My Mom took a job as the secretary of the elementary school that I attended.  When she was cleaning out the office she found a bunch of old school supplies that no one wanted.  One of these items was a small spiral-bound three-subject notebook.  I asked if I could have it.  She said yes.  For the first time in my young life I had in my possession the tools to write as much as I wanted.  This was a notebook that wasn’t earmarked for schoolwork.  It was mine to do with as I pleased.  I believe I wrote another story in which a boy in my class who I had a crush on fell in love with me.  And I think there was some time-travel involved too.  Either way, the tide had turned.  I was a writer.

I have boxes and boxes of spiral-bound notebooks with stories I started, ideas I’ve had, and boys I’ve had crushes on.  I suppose I was always meant to be a romance novelist at that.  Those notebooks lasted up until I got my first computer.  I have a few ancient floppy disks with stories on them (that may never be able to be recovered).  Nowadays I have a flash drive with everything I’ve written for the last five or so years.  But really, it all goes back to those heavy, obnoxious boxes of spiral-bound notebooks that I’ve lugged from apartment to house to apartment to state to state for the last 25 years.  And yes, I still have the original notebook.

I was born to be a writer.  It’s as simple as that.  And I’ll be a writer until the day I die and then some.

[Medieval Monday will return next week as I begin an exciting new series on Awesome Medieval Technology!]

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Dear Twitter, The Honeymoon is Over

Posted on February 2, 2012 | 10 Comments

I’ve been on Twitter for years as a pedestrian, if you will, but it was last summer that I really married into the concept of using Twitter as a writer.  And it was awesome!  I discovered this whole new world of other writers, similar souls out there in the world on a myriad of parallel journeys.  It was so cool.  Even cooler was the discovery that as I followed more people, more people followed me.  And let me tell you, having more than a thousand people following me on Twitter felt really good.

In theory Twitter is a great place to connect with people, writers and readers, celebrities and random people who share common interests.  It’s a fertile ground for getting your name out there, linking to your books and blog, and reaching out the feelers that will, in theory, sell more books.  Yeah, I want to sell books and Twitter seems like a good place to do that.  But for me, and I’m dead honest when I say this, I love finding and making new friends through Twitter as much as anything else.

Houston, we have a problem.

My thoughts about Twitter these days have actually been very eloquently summed up by Susan Kiernan-Lewis in her post Life After Twitter.  In this and an earlier post, The Great Social Media Flim-Flam Susan makes the point that all of the effort we, as writers, pour into Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets is hugely disproportionate to the results we see from it.  She questions that while some of us are able to glean success out of Herculean efforts to “get ourselves out there” is it really worth it?  Are we really getting through?

Well, my one answer to Susan is that it must be worth it on some level because I met her through social media and I really, genuinely like her and am eternally grateful that our paths crossed.  One point for Facebook!

However, I am right there with her when it comes to questioning if it’s all worth it.

What’s the point here, oh fellow writers and friends?  Why do we do this crazy, creative thing that our friends and family don’t fully understand?  Do we dive into the world of our imaginations and force ourselves through the bloody hard work of getting all of that down on paper so that we can see our number of Twitter followers rise?  Do we do it to watch the really cool bar graph of blog hits rise and fall and rise again on WordPress?

Or do we do it because we love to write?

Me?  I love to write.  Like, A LOT.  Writing keeps me sane.  I need to write, even when the work is frustrating and thankless.  And believe me, most of the time it is.  But you know what’s more frustrating?  Tracking numbers, worrying about whether I’ve been supporting my fellow writers enough with retweets and replies, and fishing for new ways of navigating social media to “get myself out there”.

My brother recently recommended a Saturday Night Live skit (featuring Daniel Radcliffe – woot!) in which complete nobodies with massively inflated senses of self-worth were interviewed on a talk show, “You Can Do Anything!”  These pathetic souls thought they were the shiz because they had a thousand views of their “independent film” on YouTube and silly things like that.  It was bittersweet.  Because really, isn’t that what so much of us do?  Isn’t that the way so many of us see our presence on social media?

I thought it was totally awesome when my Twitter numbers shot up and up and up and eventually over a thousand.  Then it hit me.  I couldn’t find my true friends in the muddle that became of my Twitter feed.  The people I really cared about were fading.  One friend from before I started using Twitter as a tool, a wonderful Aussie woman who shares my love of all things cricket and Indian was harsh and kind enough to point out to me that she hadn’t been reading my blog as much because it was all about writing.  Man, that hurt!  Why?  Because I really, really like her and her comments made me feel like I’d been untrue to a friend.

One of the consistent pieces of advice I have heard from top name writers is that it’s essential to write what you love.  If you write what you feel passionate about, what you want to read, no matter what the market is doing it will stir a reader’s soul.  I live by this notion.  Now I am coming to see that it holds true for social media as well.  My new theory is this:  Only devote as much time to social media as you feel comfortable and passionate about doing.

I like to post an occasional bon mot on Twitter.  I did it before I began “working” it and I will continue doing it.  And yes, I’ll still post links to my blog posts three times a day.  I’ll even occasionally follow new people in the future.  But Twitter, the honeymoon is over.  I’m not in love with you anymore.  I have no desire to spend hours searching through hashtags or looking for followers with similar interests to mine.  It just isn’t what moves me.  So the time has come to stop forcing myself to put effort into it.

Facebook, on the other hand, I still love.  Why?  Is it because there are more users there?  More ways to promote my work and network with like-minded seekers?  Nope.  It’s simply because it has pretty pictures and I can type more than 140 characters and have real, live conversations with people.  I like people.  That’s the point.  Facebook allows me to see them and “like” them and join in with conversations.  I owe a lot of the thanks for this discovery and for my Facebook author friends to the brilliance that is Novel Publicity.  Yeah, you could argue that it’s the same “throw your net wide to catch a few good fish” ploy as Twitter, but in my humble opinion I think it works better.  And Emlyn rocks!

Still, I don’t spend more than a few minutes every day messing around with Facebook.  I do tend to check it obsessively, which is a problem, I know.  But when it comes to time management, eschewing all this social media has given me back something that I was in danger of losing: time to write!

Because that’s what it’s all about.  We don’t write so that we can be a part of social media.  We are a part of social media because we write.  It’s time to take a deep breath and remember that.

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Are You a Success?

Posted on October 18, 2011 | 9 Comments

What is success?  How do you know when you’re successful?

I’m pretty sure that everyone thinks about these questions at some point in their life and wonders if they’re successful.  Everyone has a definition of success that they either strive for, reach, or despair that they will never reach.  But it’s a far trickier question than it looks like on the surface.

I’m a Writer.  I’m a Team Indie Writer.  I’ve seen a lot of talk recently about how to succeed as an Indie Author.  A lot of blogs and articles and tweets are filled with advice to boost your sales and rocket your books up to the top of everyone’s best-seller list.  Going in the other direction, there’s a lot of discussion out there about how to get an agent and be published traditionally.  So many people, to my great mystification, seem to be equating numbers/money with success as Writer.

To me success as a Writer has nothing whatsoever to do with sales.  Shocked?  Baffled?  Don’t believe me?  Think I’m fooling myself or saying one thing when secretly I mean another?  Nope.  For me writing is not a numbers game.  Writing is Love.  My stories are my gifts, a way to share the love inside of me with friends.  Indie Publishing for me is a way to share on a grand scale with friends who I’ve never met.

SUCCESS!!!!

So how do I define whether I’m a successful Writer or not?  By sales figures on Amazon.com?  No!  I haven’t checked my sales numbers in ages.  I measure my success as a Writer by the fact that I wrote a book I am proud of, had an editor give it the once-over so I could make it better, had a designer friend make an awesome cover, and put it up for sale.  That in and of itself is success.  I also consider myself successful as a writer because a couple of people, in person and online, have said they really enjoyed my story.  Bliss!

And that’s it.  No, seriously.  I don’t think that a pile of money or being recognized on the street could make me feel any more successful than I do.  I know you don’t believe me, but that’s part of my point: Every individual’s standard and definition of success is different.  And it is imperative that we all respect those different goals and not look down on someone because they haven’t achieved our definition of success.

The same is true for work.  Please forgive me any of my coworkers who may be reading this, but the other day when you guys were talking about how badly you wanted to be named “director” or “senior coordinator” or “vice president” I was hunkered in my cube giggling.  I don’t understand the fascination with titles.  I don’t care what you call me as long as I get my work done and as long as my boss notices my efforts and appreciates them.  I consider myself successful at my job because I accomplish so much on a daily basis.  I feel pride in that accomplishment.  I like coming to work and tackling my to-do list because it makes me feel good to know at the end of the day that I have done well.  Do I have a title?  No.  Do I have a fancy corner office?  No.  Does my boss appreciate my efforts and has she shown this in concrete ways?  Yes.  I am a success at work.

How about life?

Okay, I was raised in a small, insular society that I like to refer to as Pleasantville.  (If you haven’t seen Pleasantville with Toby McGuire and Reese Witherspoon then go out and rent it!)  I kid you not, the standard measure of success as a woman in this society is marriage and children.  Am I married?  No.  Do I have children?  No.  Do I have so much as a romantic blip on my radar?  No.  (Do I have time for a romantic blip on my radar?  Hell no!)  So am I a failure at life?  NO!

I am successful at life.  Why?  Because I’m happy.  I love my life.  I love my job, my Writing, the friends I’ve made online and in the real world.  I love writing a blog post every day.  Each comment makes me smile.  I’m a success at life because I make people smile.

This tiny person would grow up to be a SUCCESS!

You know what makes me feel like the biggest success the world has ever known?  When somebody says the following phrase to me: “I’m so glad you’re here!”  Whether it’s uttered when I show up at a cricket match just in time and have a scorebook shoved into my arms as a game is about to start, or whether it’s when I get invited to a special family birthday dinner when I’m not that person’s family, or whether it’s when I start a new job and show that I can do what needs to be done … that’s when I feel like a bucket of WIN.

But you know what was the moment of my life when I felt like the biggest success ever?  It was as I stood by the side of my Mom’s grave on a chilly April afternoon as my brothers and uncle lowered her coffin into the ground.  In that moment I knew grief so profound, sadness so deep, that nothing would ever be the same.  I felt as old as the ground under my feet.  I felt time collapse into that moment of transformation.  There was no one to catch me if I fell anymore.

And life went on.

I consider myself successful because I have gone through the worst life has to offer … and I’m still happy.  I am a success because I strive every day to take the legacy of pain and uncertainty that my Mom left me with and to make something beautiful out of it.  If you happen to buy my book I hope you notice the dedication:  “For Mom.  You always told me to dream my dreams and reach for the stars.  I did.  I always will.”  Right there.  That is my manifesto for success.  Every last word of it.  That is why I succeed.

So think about it.  Do you define success by the number of books you’ve sold?  By the money your stories make?  Is that why you write?  Are titles at work and six-figure paychecks synonymous with happiness in your world?  Do you judge your own self-importance by the number of Friends you have on Facebook or the number of people who do what you say when you tell them to?  Is your ability to carry on in the face of tragedy something you are proud of?  When your time is up will you be satisfied if you leave a legacy of wealth and fame to your heirs or if you pack a church at your funeral or if you have one stalwart friend holding your hand as you move on?

There are so many ways to answer that question.  Once you’ve answered it for yourself take a deep breath and ask if you are holding others to your standard of success in spite of what they might want.  Are you looking down on anyone because they aren’t the person you want them to be?  The time has come to get over that way of judging and to help others achieve success on their terms.

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