What Not To Say To An Editor, Part 1

One of the more popular series of posts on this blog is the What Not To Send An Editor.

What I want to start today is a new series, What Not To Say To An Editor. Previously, we talked about stuff I get in the mail, now let's talk about the things I hear, get told and read in emails.

Now before some of you cry foul that a guy who has problems with his tone shouldn't be talking about sounding professional, I'm not chastising you specifically, I'm just pointing out red flags that I see in emails.

"Thanks but I'm not interested in having my work edited." This comes after I get an email asking what I do, and possibly after the email where I say how much what I do will cost. What this tells me is that you don't want other people to see what you're creating for any number of reasons (some discussed below), and that possibly you think your work doesn't need to be edited. Generally, if you think you don't need an editor, you do, often badly.

"I don't want to give you a copy of my work, you'll steal it." No, I won't. Here's why - I've got my own work to deal with, and don't really have the time to go around shopping your work as my own. This is particularly true if your work is fraught with errors and problems and things that need fixing -- why would I put my name on something that isn't the best? (And if you think I'm going to spend the time fixing your material, not get paid for it and then turn around and claim it's mine, you should probably consider how much effort that is without any sort of paycheck.)

"I don't need an editor, I've had my friends look this over a few times." I'm glad you have friends. Are any of those friends trained in writing theory and craft? Do they have experience in helping improve your writing, word by word if you need it? Are they unbiased? It's great to have your friends read your work, but to help the work develop, you need someone critical and unbiased. Like an editor.

"I've already given the story out to beta readers, and they're totally helping." Okay, I'm going to repeat what I just said about friends and add to it that if you're giving a reader a story in fragments or a story incomplete, you're robbing them of the total experience of the story and hurting yourself by not working hard at your craft. This is magnified if you're letting the reader dictate how the story should proceed or end, since the story is yours, not theirs. If they want to tell a story, they should be writing.

"I don't need you to tell me what I'm doing wrong." When I hear this sentence, I usually have to walk away for a second, because what immediately follows is the person saying that editing is basically what your high school English teacher did, and she was a real bitch, so you don't need that again in your life. The problem is that I AM NOT AN (YOUR) ENGLISH TEACHER, and it's my job to help you write better, and that means we'll be talking about what you're not doing well and what you can do better. If this was a gym, would you not want the trainer to tell you you're lifting the weight incorrectly?

"Don't you just press F7 in Word? I can do that." Sure, you can do that. I think I could train my dog to do that. But that's not all editing is. Editing is the process of evolving the story through technique and construction. Editing is part of the story telling process because it helps clarify and strengthen the material on the page. Pressing one key might take care of typos and some (it's not perfect) generic grammar, but you can do a lot more to help a story stand up and be noticed than just spell all the words correctly.

"I edit my own work." Yes, that's what every author should do. We should go through our work and look for the parts we need to tweak and look for the big glaring errors that jump out at us. But, we also have blindspots - scenes and ideas that we're attached to, or feel bias towards, so even if they don't help the story, we keep them in, because we like the work we've done. (I should point out, we like ALL the work we do, but like Animal Farm, some work is cooler than others). The best way to correct the blindspots is to hand the work over to someone else.

"I heard from XYZ person that you didn't edit their stuff, I think that makes you a jerk." The reason(s) I didn't take XYZ on as a client are none of your business or your concern (in much the same way you can't really comment as to how I spent my Wednesday evening - you weren't involved, you weren't there.) If my decision not to work with someone leads you to think I'm a jerk, that's a you-thing. Your mind, your thought, your decision. If that decision you made means you also decide not to work with me, that's fine too, I understand - there are other editors in the sea.

"You're so expensive." If you look at the pricing guide put out by the Writer's Market and then look at my prices, I'm just a little north of the middle of the road given the type of work I do. Why? Because I've been doing this half my life. Because I've built myself on delivering good results quickly. Because I'm good at this. Because it's a job and this is how much it costs. Just like when the sink clogs, the washing machine goes kaput or the car starts making that weird sound, you can try and fix it yourself.

(This one time my dad tried to fix the dishwasher when I was growing up. We ended up re-doing the whole kitchen (new appliances AND floor AND cabinets) that year).

Don't skimp on what's important to you. If you care about this story, make sure it gets the care and help and support it needs to be the story you meant to tell.

And yes, this will be a series of posts. Stay tuned for part 2 which gets a little more technical.

Happy writing.

What I Learned In The Last Five Weeks

(Originally, this spot was a horror story about a guy who sent my old mentor a bottle of bourbon, porn and a kitten in order to get published. The story was about a paragraph long. In short, my mentor and I drank the bourbon, gave the porn to me and he kept the cat. The cat died in 2007, long after my mentor did.)

What's here instead is me being honest. I hope you don't mind.

It's been a great five weeks for me. My calendar is extra loaded with fun work projects, and depending on where you look in some niches and circles, you'll see the first bits of my work coming out. It's an exciting time for me professionally.

Personally, it's also been good, but that's not for this blog.

Here now are some things I've learned in the last five weeks. I will effort to keep this list all-business related.

1. Be honest. Not 'whenever possible', not 'whenever convenient', ALWAYS. I can point to a few people as being big springboards for my success, and I should probably point to a few more than I normally do, but if I had to point at one thing I'm doing that's helping it's being honest. This isn't to say I wasn't honest before, but that I didn't make it a priority. I had some weird hurdle that I made situations and people climb before they got to know me, and it gave them an impression I was a jerk or difficult or mean or something. Whatever they thought, I'm glad they don't think it now. It's still hard work making sure my tone is how I want and that I'm coming across how I want, but it's easier now. Every day the new successes help.

2. There's no substitute for outright loving your work. I am so fortunate to have the job I do. All the people I work for are GREAT, easily accessible, friendly, helpful and absolutely committed to putting out great products. My clients are incredibly hard-working people, who manage and juggle a thousand things I couldn't even conceive of and still find time to scribble out books I'm lucky enough to read and help make better. If I didn't love this job, if I didn't want to wake up every day and do this, I'd..probably be working a job completely beneath me or have sunken into years-deep depression by now. People can tout high-paying glamor jobs all they want, but for me, I love what I do, and I won't replace it for anything or anyone.

3. I don't need to be a Lorax, or carry around a soapbox. Over the weekend, there was a little battle on the interwebs about some writers not getting paid and some other people spoke on their behalf about it. Now, admittedly, I am biased in this fight - I know and work with/for a lot of people who participated in that discussion, as well as with the company being spoken at. And because they're my employer(s), I'm not going to get into who-said-what-to-who, because I do not know the particulars and because to the best of my knowledge it's a non-issue by now. But it made me aware of just how far I've come in working on my tone. I would have SO been the guy on the soapbox spitting fire and drawing heat for other people, because I used to need that cause, I used to need a fuse lit under me to give a damn. But I don't need that to make my life better any more. There's enough on my plate and I'm happy with it all so that I don't need to go stirring things up on the internet for either attention or sport. My days as a professional shit-stirrer are over.

4. Those skills I take for granted are often those for which I am praised, admired and loved. I do a lot of things differently than others. For a long time I felt like those were hindrances or signs of my worthlessness and inferiority, because honestly, who reads at least eight books a week and memorizes whole chunks of game mechanics, canon and material for fun? And who answers emails within minutes of their transmission to the depths I do? These are not the skills typically found in people. These are skills I just sort of assumed everyone has, because when I was developing them (read: young), it was no big deal that in elementary school I was reading so much or that in junior high I was writing speeches for people and working on college-level material. While this did create a blindspot for me that I'm occasionally smacking into (you mean you can't describe the whole day in first grade where your teacher explained how to spell the word 'miniature'? Or that you don't remember what you wore the day you stood in a foreign airport and had a hot coed blow smoke in your face almost twenty years ago?) - Those are not the skills of the cave troll of Moria, Frodo, these are the skills that I can contribute and offer to those around me. Realizing I actually have the ability to matter to others has been huge.

5. I get listened to. For much of my life, professional and otherwise, either because of my tone or whatever, I didn't think that what I say mattered. I'd make recommendations or give advice or write out reports and messages and then see the material totally ignored. But lately, and this is probably because I'm talking to/with a better class of people and working in ways that are positive and healthful, I'm getting listened to. I have actual evidence that what I'm saying translates into real-world stuff. Whether that's a project taking shape based on my ideas or having my contributions to a Google document not just get deleted out...I thrill at seeing things I say actually mattering to other people to the point where something positive comes out of it.

6. It's not about boundaries, it's about budget. I once got told I have trouble building boundaries, that I don't appropriate separate or afford things adequate distance. But they I also got told that I keep too distant from things, too objective and too cold. It's hard to rectify that. Instead, what I did, because I am forever finding new routes between Point A and Point B, was look at the problem from a management issue - am I giving issue 1/issue 2 enough time or too much time? Are there tools I can use to make this more concrete? It turns out that given enough material and a good objective, I can manage a lot and do a lot effectively. This isn't me bragging, because I'm NOT saying I can do more than you can, this is me saying that I don't have a problem with boundaries. I have a problem with budgeting time and staying motivated and interested. Do you know why it's been less of a problem lately? Because I'm doing more things that actually interest me. It's quite cool.

I've learned a lot in the last five weeks. I look forward to what the next five teach me.

Happy writing.