Tag Archive | editing

Author Confessions: We Don’t Always Get to Publish the Story We Want

Apr8
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Author Confessions: We Don’t Always Get to Publish the Story We Want

That seems kind of odd to say doesn’t it? If I publish a story, wasn’t it the one I wanted to publish? Not necessarily. There are several reasons why an author doesn’t always get to publish the story they want to.

Reason 1: The story is not one that a publisher accepts. This might be because the author hasn’t found the right publisher for their story. Or maybe they did but the publisher already published something similar or has something similar in the works. Even with fiction they don’t want to publish stories that are too close in concept. I have received stories that were no where near what our publisher would accept as they violate our core principles (not Christian faith represented, foul language, sex…) and those I had to politely reject.

Reason 2: The story isn’t ready yet. This happens quite often where an author submits a story that needs a lot more polishing. As an editor I used to give a lot more feedback on stories like this but after being taken advantage of too often I can no longer do this. Yes, I was a sucker. I understand how hard it is to be published so I would read the entire story and give concrete feedback on how it could be improved. This is something I was not paid for. One author responded and said: “I knew it wasn’t ready but wanted your free edit.” Really? Now that wouldn’t have been so bad if she had resubmitted it to me with the changes so I could have maybe recouped my time in some kind of compensation down the line. I told that author’s agent that he should never submit any of her work to me again. She had taken the story, reworked it, and submitted it to someone else and got published. And to be honest, I don’t have that kind of time to do that for free.

Reason 3: There are drastic changes that need to be made to the story. This happened to me. I had a story, Truffles & Traffic and I tried something a little different with four points-of-view. I’d seen another author do this successfully and thought maybe I’d give it a shot. My editor hated the concept and I had to rewrite the story drastically, removing that romance to only be seen through the eyes of the two primary characters. I think the story is still good, but it wasn’t want I had wanted to publish. I tried something and failed at it. Now maybe another publisher would have liked that but had already contracted it before being given that news so I did the work to get it changed.

Reason 4: The author never submits the story. Yes, this happens way too often. I might meet an author at a conference and hear his or her pitch for a story and get excited about it and want to see it. Fear often sets in. Sure they might work on it more based on suggestions or things they learned at the conference but either they chicken out and fear the rejection or they realize this is more work than they really want to put into it. I attended a conference where an author got a book contract and the editor said he didn’t know whether to congratulate her or feel sorry for her because now the hard work was going to begin. Another part of this is that some authors have stories they wrote or started and never finished. Fear? They started writing something different and left one behind. It just never gets published and that’s OK!

This actually happened to my friend DeeDee Lake who I finally co-authored several books with. She had started it and had a lot of ideas but the timeline didn’t work and she had too many plot points to fit well into one book. As a result we wrote four together! The first story wasn’t want she initially intended, but I think it was better.

Reason 5: Not ever story needs to be published. Writing can be it’s own reward. I’ve met with many people who want to write and I encourage them to do it, but don’t start out writing with the goal of being published. While it would be lovely if every story could be published, it is a lot of work and sometimes writing your story, your experiences, or even something creative, is all that you need. There is catharsis in doing that. I’ve seen people make their own books to only share with family but not sell to the wider public and that is fine as well. Not every story needs to go through the gamut of the publishing industry to have value. If you write something and love it and want to share it with the world and are willing to commit to the work it takes to get published? Then go for it.

Reason 6: Something in your story is triggering something in the editor. Whew, this is a tough one. Usually if I contract a story, I’m the editor for it, but we have copyeditors as well and sometimes it might be that person who has an issue with something in your story. This might result from a bad experience they’ve had and they might react to some of the content or the way your story takes shape. The reality is not every story is right for everybody. I had an author pitch a story and something about it made me uncomfortable. We’d published other stories by her and we wanted to work with her. My Editor-in-chief gave a suggestion about how it could be changed to be more palatable but due to the initial “yuck” factor I asked that it be assigned to another editor. It was. Then that editor needed to resign due to health issues and it ended up back on my plate. It was a fine story but due to the emotions I had the first time around I never could shake that “yuck” feeling although with the changes it was just fine. I had this happen to one of my stories as well and finally I needed to ask for a different editor because I realized the emotional reaction she’d had to my story, even after I made many of the changes she requested, meant that she’d not be able to accept that it was MY story and some of what she asked for, I wasn’t willing to change. That’s a hard road to travel as an author. I’ve even called authors to talk to them when a copy editor has had an issue–mostly so they understand that I am in their corner and I love their story–but could you go back and make these changes? Every time it has been good but sometimes the personal touch is important. Otherwise most of what is communicated is on paper and it can lose the validation that an author really does need. Publishing can be a scary process.

I have other stories that changed drastically over the course of editing, before and after being contracted, so they weren’t the story I originally intended to tell. Some of that is me growing as an author in my craft, but it’s good to remember that sometimes even after a contract, significant changes might be made to a manuscript. A good editor will understand your voice and respect that. Still, before you submit a story, remember that we don’t always get to publish the story we want--but hopefully it will be even better than what you had planned for.

 

 

Author Confessions: You Don’t Work Do You?

Mar11
Reading Time: 3 minutes

You Don’t Work Do You?

A writer is an unusual person. It may seem like an idyllic life. Sit town and write. How hard could that be?

Until a kid wants something or the dog wants to play or your spouse needs help in the garage…

Writing is hard work and it involves concentration to put a story together. It also involves concentrated time and effort. Hopefully some skill.

If I want to set a goal to write a chapter a day I  can usually manage that in an hour. Well, if a book takes say, 35 hours to write, then why couldn’t I knock that out in a week?

Because some of writing is breathing, praying, researching, thinking, and reading. Non-fiction could possibly go faster but it’s still not easy to put words on a page in a way that would be good, and impact a reader. Something that someone would want to read.

Take that 35-40 hours of writing time for a book that might take 6 hours to read. Add editing. An author will read through a book many times. It could take me two days minimum to usually do one round of edits on a book. That’s a lot of concentrated time considering the overused words, phrasing, plot lines, time consistency throughout the story, great beginnings and endings to a chapter, finding typos, tightening up sentences and paragraphs, and maybe even deleting unnecessary words or phrases.

Then making sure the story engages all the senses without using the words: feel, look, taste, hear,  see and smell.

Oh, and after that, grammar. Commas, quotation marks, hyphens, spelling … Then you submit it and the process begins all over when another set of eyes surveys the version you sent. I have some novels with so many files of edits it is unbelievable.

Even with all that being done by myself and maybe two other editors, if I go back and read older works I can see how I could have done it better.

Are you exhausted yet? All of this is without a penny coming into my checking account.

Do I work? Yes. And hard.

My husband will lament that I don’t make what I’m worth for writing books. He then will say, “But that doesn’t seem to bother you.”

Sure, a nice income would be lovely, but it’s more about heart impact than it is about making money. The first book I ever wrote I wrote for myself. I’m my first audience. Now I could do that and enjoy the stories without ever doing one edit. That would be selfish though. If God gives me a story why wouldn’t I share that with others? If God leads me to publish, then I need to be as obedient to Him in writing the first draft as I am with every subsequent edit.

Is it work? Absolutely. Unless God decides to bless I will never receive an income equal to the time I put into my stories. I’d be wealthier working at a fast-food restaurant. (I’ll pass, thank you. Been there, done that!). It’s a good thing I enjoy what I do—at least most of the time!

When you see a book for sale for $18.00, realize that there was a lot of work for that amount of money. It amazes me how someone will pay $5 for a cup of coffee that lasts maybe 30 minutes? A book can be read in maybe 6 hours – and more than once! Wouldn’t that be worth $30 then? And e-books are even cheaper! They never grow cold or contain calories!

If you do spend that money, and enjoy the work of an author, please give them a review on Amazon. Only a few words are needed. It may not fill our bank accounts, but it will help others find our books and in time that might net us a little bit of compensation for our labors. Let them know you appreciate their hard work as well as the labors of their editors, marketing people, layout and cover artists.

Author Confessions: Fun or Hard Work?

Jan29
Reading Time: 3 minutes

When I first wrote a book, it was in 2009 and it was such a rush. I was filled with delight as the story progressed. That high quickly diminished when I began to understand just how much I didn’t know about storytelling–at least not the kind a publisher would want. The Christian market has different standards than much of what I had read in the secular market. Oh, I had so much to learn.

I kept writing. Many of my friends who are writers will exclaim at how fast I can write a story. Most of the time that is true but I have to be really focused to put in that kind of sustained effort. The reality is, as someone who does not plot a novel, writing fast helps me keep track of all my characters and plot points. Sure I make notes as I go but usually I just try to get the story out. The more stories I write you would think the easier it would get. Not true. Sometimes I think I don’t want to get to the end of the story so I will find other things to do. But why? Because then the really hard work comes, the editing, tearing it apart, eventually submitting it and having it either accepted or rejected. If there is a contract then the harder work of editing begins. And marketing. Let’s not forget that.

They tell writers we need to toughen up — but sometimes it is hard to do the edits. It can feel like a personal attack because this story was birthed out of my imagination. I’m not a tough person. When I was in grade school, all someone had to do was look at me with anger and I’d burst into tears. I’m not quite so prone to that now, but in some ways that’s a loss, not a gain.

The more one writes, the better they hopefully get. I had one novel where I tried something different. I wrote two concurrent love stories. One was primary and the other secondary but that meant four,not two points-of-view (the perspective of the one character, what they see, feel, hear, touch, or in anyway experience). It got contracted but I had to remove the points-of-view of the secondary love story. The romance was still there but was only seen through the eyes and ears of my two main characters. Ugh.

It doesn’t matter how you feel about it–the work has to be done. I have some books that I’ve written that due to hassles during the editing process, I almost don’t want to pick up and read when they were done. If I do read them, I’m often amazed at the story and those yucky feelings from the editing disappear as I get lost in a story I should know by heart, but don’t because I write so many. I’ll enjoy it immensly.

So there is fun in the process. There’s an awe and wonder when I read words on a page, enjoy them and marvel because then it hits me. I wrote that. Me? Little ol’ me? Obviously, God was at work. I’m not that great on my own. Many authors refuse to read their books. Of course, the down side is every time I read an older novel I think of ways I could have done it better. I wrote it the best I could at the time, with what I knew. Time gives perspective. If older titles are not longer available someday, I’ll need to consider whether I want to revise them for another run, totally understanding that it would mean another few rounds of edits in the process. Because making changes always seems to mess up something!

Is writing hard work? Yes. The pay is crappy and my employer (me) is an inconsistant taskmaster. Life is full and busy without all that, but as long as God calls me to do this work, I’ll continue on.

Writer Wednesday: Liz Tolsma

Nov2
Reading Time: 3 minutes

liz-tolsma-headshot-2I’m happy to introduce you to author Liz Tolsma who I’ve been acquainted with for several years and has been part of starting up our local chapter of ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers). She writes, edits, speaks and has been a delight to know personally.

When did you decide that you would be an author? Was it something you fell into, felt called to…

I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic and wanted to be an author. I got really serious about it after 9/11, because I realized then that my life wouldn’t last forever. I didn’t want to have any regrets, so I gave writing a shot.

What’s your pet peeve?

People who leave doors open.

What was your most embarrassing moment as a writer?

It just happened. I didn’t recognize one of my street team members right away when I met her in person. Thank goodness she had a nametag on!

What has been your most difficult challenge as an author?

Just finding time to write. With children to shuttle places, including one with special needs, and a house to run, and my editing business, it’s hard.

How do you process rejections and/or negative reviews?

I’ve really learned how to deal with them. For rejections, I trust God’s perfect timing. If He has meant for it to be published, he’ll send the right contract at the right time. And for negative reviews, I try to balance them against positive reviews. I just got a review for my first book that said the romance wasn’t very strong. The next review said they loved the romance! You can’t please all of the people all of the time.

What do you feel is the best success so far in your writing career?

Definitely being a finalist for the Carol Award.

What would be your top three pieces of advice to newer, up and coming authors?

1. Read as much as a can, both inside and outside of your genre.

2. Write, write, write. Once you have words on a page, you have something to work with.

3. Find a really good critique partner or even an editor who can see things you can’t and who can help you learn and grow as an author.

As a Christian author, what would you like your legacy to be?

That my books have touched many hearts for Christ.

railstolove_cover

Recently released!

What is your current work in process?

Right now, I’m writing The Song the Heart Sings. It’s the second book in my next WWII story. It’s set in Poland. What many people don’t know is that Hitler hated the Poles almost as much as the Jews. In fact, as many Polish Christians died as Polish Jews. So, the story takes place at a forced labor camp in southern Poland.

This is Liz’s latest release: Rails to Love. 

Circus costume designer Ellen Meyers rides the rails from city to city with the troupe, but when mystery and suspicion fall on her, can her newfound love with trainmaster Will Jorgenson and their faith in God survive?

BIOGRAPHY

Liz Tolsma is the author of several WWII novels and prairie romance novellas. The Rails to Love collection released in October 2016. The Matchmaker Brides collection releases in February 2017, and her next WWII novel, The Melody of the Soul, is scheduled to release in April 2017. She is a popular and an editor. She has lived in Wisconsin most of her life, and she now resides next to a farm field with her husband and their two daughters. Her son proudly serves as a U.S. Marine. They adopted all of their children internationally, and one has special needs. When not busy putting words to paper, she enjoys reading, walking, working in her large perennial garden, kayaking, and camping with her family. Please visit her blog, The Story behind the Story, at http://www.liztolsma.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter (@LizTolsma), and LinkedIn. She is also a regular contributor to the Pencildancer blog and the Midwest Almanac blog.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liz.tolsma.9
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LizTolsma
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liz-tolsma-64992ab7?trk=hp-identity-name
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/liztolsma/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorliztolsma/

Buy links for Rails to Love:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Christianbook.com

 

Homophones: An Author’s Nemesis

May5
Reading Time: < 1 minute

I have always enjoyed Veggie Tales but this silly song by Larry the Cucumber is especially poignant to an author. To be clear, having problems with homophones does not make me racist against phonics. Not at all.

Because weather, I mean whether you like it or not, the English language is filled with words that sound the same but have different meanings. When reading or editing a book it can be hard to see these words for what they are, clever masquerades trying to trick you into saying something you didn’t intend and which, if read correctly, would be utterly ridiculous. As an author or an editor one has to have a special radar out for these words as they are commonly misused.

So be aware and watch out for these nasty posers out to doom your writing. And if all else fails. . .

peanuts grammar nazi

Post-NaNoWriMo Blues

Dec2
Reading Time: 3 minutes

2013-Winner-Facebook-ProfileNovember 30th, at 11:59 pm, marked the end of NaNoWriMo. For those unacquainted, this is National Novel Writing Month. It really should be International, because people from all over the globe participated. 309,173 novels were started in November.

I am unable to get statistics yet for this year, but so you can have an idea of the scope and challenge of this, here are the totals from 2012.  Last year 341,375 people signed up for NaNoWrimo and wrote a whalloping 3,288,976,325 words. That’s three trillion, folks! Now some criticize this event saying that if everyone is a winner than what’s the point? See you win if you pass 50,000 words written and validated on the sight and they have to be words written only in November. So how many actually make it? Last year 38,438 writers crossed the finish line. That is 11% of the total who signed up.

Some quit early on, some hang on to the bitter end, some, like me, soar past the goal and keep writing, because a novel is usually far more than 50,000 words.

If you are of that 11% (or whatever it is this year) – Congratulations.

If you fell short, you are a hero for trying and you hopefully have more words on your novel than when when you started the month. That is not an accomplishment to be despised. Most authors do not write 50,000 in a month. Ever. Just keep writing. Keep learning and try again next year.

But December is upon us and I have a few words of caution, especially for those that finished with 50K and even finished their story. This is a rough draft. It’s the first step in a long, drawn out process to publication. Granted, your story is equal parts genius and stupidity. Genius because you thought it up out of your own head. Stupidity because it is filled with problems that you can’t see right now. So here is my advice to you.

  • Celebrate your hard work! Congratulations!
  • If the novel is not finished, keep writing and finish it.
  • When it’s done, read through it and add or fix whatever you feel needs to be done
  • Set it aside for at least a month (or more) before working on your first revision. You are too close to your story right now to look at it objectively.
  • Let others read your work and consider their feedback and use it in your next revision.
  • Check for consistency in your story.
  • Check your grammar and sentence structure.
  • Run it through a critique group and make more changes and revisions.
  • Revise AGAIN if you need to. Use a site like http://www.prowritingaid.com to help you.
  • After all that is done, work on a synopsis and query letter (sometimes this is even harder than writing the novel itself!)
  • Then look for places to submit it to if you want to seek publication. Be prepared for agents and editors to force you to make even more changes to your work.
  • Most of all, take your time and enjoy the process.

Your NaNo novel is a diamond in the rough and needs more chipping away and polishing to make it sparkle and shine. I don’t write these things to discourage you but to give you a bigger picture, if you want to pursue publication, of the process you need to pursue. And these are only the icing on the cake. There is still so much more.

Congratulations, Wrimos! And if you scoff and think it isn’t such a big deal, well, I dare you to join us next November.

Bug-a-boo Words

Aug26
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Every author has them. Words that crop up repeatedly in their work that are overused.

Sometimes it might be a pet verb (get, could, would are popular choices).

Sometimes it’s a phrase. In my first draft of my first novel I was shocked to realize how may times my heroine said “Oh!” Yeah.

Then I had a book that had “then” everywhere. Then I had to go and do a search and replace and try to get rid of them.

Or how about so? I once made the mistake of doing a search and delete of every instance of so in my manuscript. Um, not wise. So is also in words like something, among others. I had done this with “very” as well with no so nice results because it is in eVERYthing as well. What a mess!

I have a bit of a problem with a little bitty phrase “a bit” that often pops up as well.

Now I have a list of words I try to eliminate after I’ve revised my novel and these are words I often look for in the work I edit as well. They include: felt, feel, feeling, just, then, a bit, so, very, always, often. Most of the time (oops, most should be on that list too) those words are unnecessary and can be deleted to clean up the text.

Then you get into the dreaded -ly adverbs. Or mixing -ing verbs with -ed ones. Or too many adjectives. Part of me wonders why we had to learn about all these words in school if we are only going to delete them in our writing.

A great free aid to help you in checking your writing is ProWriting Aid.

How about you? Do you find you have any pet bug-a-boo words that crop up in your writing? What are they?

Rejection Letters

Jul1
Reading Time: 3 minutes

The one thing I was looking forward to least with being an acquisitions editor was the fact that I would need to give rejection letters. I know how it feels to get that big fat “NO!” in letter form with no explanation or encouragement. Even if the letter is a form one what I hear is “You suck as a writer.”

The truth is, when I first started, I probably did! I’ve learned so much over the years of writing and now editing. Now that I am on the delivery end of rejections I have to say a few things.

1. I read every manuscript with the hope and expectation that I will love it. I don’t look at that first page and set a high bar. I just want to get pulled into the story.

2. I don’t give up quickly. I had one manuscript that I struggled to read -but I read it anyway. As time goes on I won’t be able to read full manuscripts if they don’t grab me quickly.

3. As I told writers at a recent conference, I don’t send a form rejection letter. If I reject you I’m going to try to tell you why and if I can figure out how to guide to what you could work on to improve your writing, I will. Who knows, maybe in time you will come back and be a blockbuster hit!

4. Some stories don’t grab me personally. Unfortunately this is reality. I don’t like every NYTime’s best seller out there and neither do you. However there are other editors I work with and I’m thinking that down the line if a story looks good but doesn’t appeal to me, I might just toss it to one of them and see if it’s more up their alley. See, if I am going to contract an author, I need to love that manuscript because I’m going to be spending a lot of time on it.

5. Even multi-published authors have to have their work edited. No manuscript is ever going to arrive perfect and ready for me to just  pass on to be published without some work. It’s the nature of the industry and our own humanness. So even if you get a contract, that only means your really hard work may have just begun!

6. I try to remind authors too that every editor is going to have their own opinion. I read the work of others and think I would have done things differently with the editing. How audacious is that? The fact is, no novel is ever perfect even though an editor tries to help it sparkle and shine. Most authors look back on earlier work and cringe because they’ve learned so much since then. But you don’t learn unless you put yourself out there, and you don’t grow unless someone helps you and gives you feedback.

7. I’ve had to do manuscript critiques – on the fly and also with a little more time to process. It is not the favorite part of my job because I realize I’m human and make my own mistakes too when I write. I cringe when I have to give negative feedback because, well, I imagine myself on the receiving end of it and I’ve got a bit of a sensitive side when it comes to stuff like that. Many will say “Grow a thick skin” but I think many authors are sensitive souls which is what allows them to write and create and yes, maybe a few tears will have to be shed and some chocolate or potato chips imbibed to get through those low spots, but it really is in feeling that pain and hurt that we strive to do better. If no one lovingly pointed out your weaknesses, you would never have a chance to improve.

I hope that helps. Many people who pitch at conferences will never submit their manuscripts to the editor or agent because they are afraid of rejection. I get that, but you can never move forward if you don’t put yourself out there.

Keep writing. Keep reading. Keep learning! I pray that you all have helpful rejection letters in your future. You are going to get them so they might as well benefit you!  And when you do, please let the writer of that note know you appreciate it if they give you feedback. They are the hardest part of my job and more than anything I want to encourage another author, not tear him or her down. Be nice regardless of how you feel. The world of editing/publishing is not a large one. You don’t know how your gracious and teachable spirit could help you make a connection down the line. Don’t burn your bridges because you’ve been stung by a nasty letter.