Author Confession: Owning My Mistakes (Ouch!)

I would rather not write this post. I used to be in a relationship with someone I called “the blame-shifter.” Nothing was ever his fault. Anything that happened, was due to someone else’s nefarious sins. Any failure in our relationship was always my fault because he was perfect. It always bothered me. I don’t ever want to be like that.

This past week I discovered that something slipped by me with my editing work for another author. Ugh. The last time something like that happened was when my father was dying and I thought we were all done with edits on a manuscript and so didn’t think about it only to realize, oops! It still had one more round to go! I blitzed and and so did the copyeditor, of course after copious apologies from me. We got it done because I caught it soon enough. Grief can do amazing things to our memory and while that might be true, the reality is, I should have been more diligent. You’d think I’d learned that lesson.

Last fall I sent two manuscripts to an author whom I’ve been working with for about ten years now. She’s always been on time with returning edits and somehow when I looked at our tracker for our projects I didn’t realize that she still had the documents. Odd. Not her fault though. We had a computer glitch in the fall and documents (as in edits) were not being sent out via the system like they should have. It never dawned on me that they never got to her.

So the other day I was in the tracker getting some stuff input for Christmas novellas when I realized this author had a book scheduled to release in two months. Shouldn’t be an issue if we were finishing up copyedits or final proofs but it had only been through one round of edits. Yikes! How did I miss this? Yes, life is busy and to be honest, there is no good excuse for this. The author never inquired as to where the edits, however,  I am the editor and I’m responsible to manage the project and I failed miserably, aided perhaps by a computer glitch, but still, I screwed up.

I instantly emailed the author with the edits (it really impacted two of her projects coming out close together). Once I got those sent, I called my Editor-in-Chief to confess my flub. She was gracious. Yes, we had computer issues and email issues. She said, “It’s OK, Susan.” I responded. “No, it isn’t. While I appreciate your forgiveness and understanding it is causing a ripple effect for everyone.  I messed up. It shouldn’t have happened.”

The author was gracious as well when we decided that the project due in two months would get pushed off to March 2025 due to no other room in the publishing schedule to get it out this year. The upside of this is with two other manuscripts she has releasing this year it will make her work load a lot lighter and she’ll be able to stretch out her marketing for each book so they get the attention they deserve. Less work? Why would that be a bad thing?

This is a multi-published author who has been down the path to publication many times so for her this wasn’t as devastating as it might have been for a first time author. I had that happen with my first novel when someone messed up and we had to delay the release by a few months. I was crushed. I cried. Life happens, but it still was hard to swallow. Fast forward several years and I had some major edits on a story (long story I’ll probably never tell here, but it was agonizing). This came as I was recovering from  surgery and planning a move and a wedding in a short period of time. Even without all that happening I would never have been able to do what that copyeditor wanted me to do and get it done in time for publication. It is unusual for publishing dates to be pushed off, but unexpected things can crop up on the process. I had another book project with another publisher early on in my career, that kept getting delayed so much that I finally had to cancel my contract with them (they violated the terms of the contract).  We parted ways amicably and while that book (non-fiction) is still awaiting publication, I hope it will release someday when God deems it is ready. Not like I don’t have enough to do right now as it is. My plate is full.

With this experienced author, we could have skipped steps to try to make the deadline, but I’ve learned enough through the years that we need to respect the process and unfortunately, time is an essential part of that. Due to the fact that we are not machines, but human beings, editing needs time and space between work done on a manuscript so the author, and editor, can review it objectively.

So, I’ve now shared with you the truly human factor in publishing. People mess up. We make mistakes.  We miss things. I’ve been on both sides of the issue. I am never offended when an author asks where things are at with a submission or in the editing process because I recognize that it is important to them and sometimes those reminders help keep me on track or take a second look to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I shouldn’t need those reminders, but life does get busy for all of us. I’m not making an excuse or blaming anyone else but myself. Any good author, editor, or publisher will be willing to own their mistakes along the way. Ultimately, God is over all of this and perhaps this delay for this particular author will give her not only more time to do the work that needs to be done and do it well, but bless her writing in untold ways. I don’t know. I’m not blaming God. It’s a truth that even when we mess up in life, and own our mistakes, HE is still capable of bringing good out of it. Owning my mistakes though is an important part of the process, even though it hurts to admit just how human I am.