Category Archives: feedback groups

Editing Your Manuscript

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Remember those speakers at writers conferences who said you need to borrow or buy a professional editor to help you with your manuscript? Well, if you haven’t followed their advice, it’s not too late.

I’ll confess that I did not use a professional editor to prepare my manuscript for submissions in the 1990s. I did belong to a feedback group that provided a lot of advice and suggestions. Good, but not the same thing. Later, I was fortunate to have a professional editor look over my manuscript and begin editing before the “2016 publisher” went out of business.

My full-on experiences with an editor have come with my current publisher, first with Mistaken Identity, then with Connections. I’m not sure if there’s a “standard” for processing a manuscript for publication, but the process set up by my publisher seems logical and has worked well for me.

Initially, my editor marked up the submitted manuscript and returned the file to me via email. I read the marked up manuscript, making changes to a “clean copy” file of the manuscript. When I returned the new file, I noted in the email any variance from the editor’s changes and any significant changes I made. We then completed a second editor-author edit exchange for each book.  

Once the galley had been created from the second round clean copy, I had two opportunities to make any final changes, first by reviewing a PDF version and finally by reviewing a print version.

Here’s what I’ve learned from this experience:

  1. If you think that those “A’s” you scored in English/grammar classes prepared you for the challenge of being a professional editor, you are mistaken. As I was, you may be confident that your manuscript is in pretty good shape, but there is a lot more to the task.
  2. If an editor gives you a list of global style changes, take the time to make them. This person knows what is current and acceptable and can help you with consistency and word flow. This can be from an editor at a conference, an editor to whom you submitted your work, or the editor assigned by your publisher.
  3. If an editor asks you a question about a character, relationship, event, time reference, or anything else, don’t just answer the question in a note to the editor, answer the question in your book. I found that the answers can be provided in a sentence here or there. Even more importantly, the questions may point out an “oops” in your plot line or a character’s behavior.
  4. If an editor makes a word or format change, think about how it might be applied elsewhere as you read your manuscript again.
  5. Finally, don’t be too timid to challenge your editor’s changes. If it’s a technical edit that you aren’t sure of, look it up in your own source and send off an email to discuss it with the editor. If your editor challenges something in the story itself, think it through and then discuss it with the editor. Editors are good and necessary, but they do not claim to be perfect. Right or wrong, the discussion will help you to hone your writing skills.

Writing Career Reboot

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Determined to fulfill my dreams of being a published author, I realized I’d have to write full-time. Given my aversion to risk-taking that meant I would have to be financially independent, with a little help from Social Security. Toward that end, I developed a list of must-dos:

  • wait a few years until eligible for Social Security benefits, including Medicare
  • no big purchases I couldn’t justify and pay off quickly
  • pay off car loan early
  • pay off house mortgage early
  • save as much money as possible
  • depart from my job in an orderly fashion by giving plenty of notice, documenting job descriptions and procedures, organizing files and archives, and locating and training my replacement.

There were a few bumps along the way, but by March 2014 everything fell into place. In May, my replacement fortuitously transferred from a sister store and required very little time to train. I stuck around until early July to fill in for an office vacationer and to tie up some loose ends.

Through the end of 2014 my primary goal was to put my house and yard in order—cleaning, culling, organizing, and fixing things that had been ignored for a decade or more.

But I also began the reboot on my writing career. All I had to do was finish the second book (ultimately titled Connections) of my mystery series and maybe polish the first one along the way, then sell them both to a publisher. Piece of cake, right?

The first draft of Connections was completed in September of 2015. It would be another eleven months before reviewing, reworking, and revising were “completed.”

Nevertheless, from October 2015 through March 2016 I submitted numerous queries via email and made many pitches at writers’ conferences for both Mistaken Identity and Connections. Two regional publishers expressed interest and I signed a contract with one of them in April 2016 for the publication of Mistaken Identity. The publisher hoped the book would be in print by October 2017.

My experience working with an editor over the next several months was illuminating and beneficial. My editor’s suggestions gave me a new perspective. It turns out that the best advice writers are given is to engage a professional editor to objectively review your work and make suggestions.

Bad news first: Due to unforeseen circumstances with the publishing company work on Mistaken Identity stopped in January 2017. I did not become aware of the situation until May and did not realize until August that it was unlikely work would resume.

Good news: It’s easier to “re-reboot” one’s career when you’ve done it a few times. And so I have begun anew making pitches and submitting queries. And I am working on the third novel in the series.

There’s always hope!!

Fulfilling a Dream

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In 1989 I took a major step toward fulfilling a life-long dream. I sold my home, bought an RV, and quit a very good job in order to begin a career as a writer. I’ll admit at that time my motivation was not strictly about writing, although I did enjoy it and wanted to provide that joy to other readers.

In retrospect I realize I was really tired of the crazy bureaucracy of the Washington, D.C., area where I worked and lived. In other words, I experienced a “burnout.” And so, when my mother—and biggest fan—suggested we sell everything and go on the road so I could write, I scoffed, but soon began wondering, “Why not?” It took a year to accomplish the deed.

We traveled for about a year, during which I completed a book about the evils of working for a federal contractor. I call it my first cathartic novel. It lived in a big box on a garage shelf for a while, but it’s in my office closet now with other first attempts at becoming a published author.

Through some miracle, call it Divine Order, my mother and I took root in Branson, Missouri. The city was still small and sweet and unassuming. It wouldn’t become That Branson for a few more years.

I joined the Ozarks Writers League (OWL), a group of one hundred or so regional writers and writer-hopefuls. I was also lucky to find a small feedback group. The OWL quarterly meetings provided much information about the writing craft and business. But the five other people in my feedback group provided me incredible personal support and guidance regarding my work.

I wrote my next novel, taking a chapter a month to the feedback group. Some chapters returned for additional scrutiny. I didn’t keep a writing log between 1990 and 1994, but during that period I finished the second novel and sent the manuscript (paper copies!!!) to various agents and publishers.

I struggled through a nameless novel and a couple more false starts before beginning  “Byline” in June 1995. Because of a full-time job and other responsibilities, it took me—still with the feedback group—over two years to finish and polish Byline, which was renamed “Mistaken Identity” along the way.

The queries and submissions for Mistaken Identity proceeded slowly. Keep in mind, the internet as we know it now did not exist. Submissions were sent by the good old US mail in brown envelopes, first sample chapters then—if you were lucky—the entire manuscript. Agents took months to respond and most responses were form letters of rejection. Occasionally one would throw you a crumb—I love your characters, but . . .

I worked on other books with the feedback group through June 1998, when I became discouraged and quit the group. I spent some time revising Mistaken Identity for additional submissions and started sending it out again. A sequel—after several tries—did not progress beyond a thirteenth chapter.

In March of 1999, an agent called me at my day job requesting the entire manuscript. I sent it. He called again and wanted to represent me. After almost two years of trying queries by mail and personal pitches at writers’ conferences, I was elated. His explanation that a small “copy fee” would be required sounded reasonable to my desperate and naïve ears. Each month he sent a report about submissions and rejections and each month I sent the “copy fee.” In January 2002, I severed the relationship.

By then, I had given up on Mistaken Identity, the sequel, and writing itself. My mother passed away in 2000, so I lost my most ardent encourager. In 2001 and again in 2003 I was promoted at work and I rationalized that I didn’t have the time to write. My writing career would have to wait.

Writer’s Feedback Groups

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Writing is a solitary endeavor often taking place in a workspace carved out in a bedroom, the den, or perhaps the basement (or attic) of the writer’s home. The more co-occupants in the residence, the smaller and more remote the area set aside for her creative sessions.

An author can spend hundreds of hours alone crafting each sentence, paragraph, and chapter, lost in a world inhabited by characters of her own imagination. Subsequent periods of editing and rewriting, including restructuring and major plot deviations, add to the total time the novelist, poet, journalist, or playwright spends to complete her masterpiece.

But all the time spent in solitude is not enough to achieve a truly polished product ready for publication. It is crucial for the author to receive impartial analysis of the work.

Such independent review can come from a friend or relative—an interesting and helpful, but not always effective, first step. A more expensive option is to engage the services of a professional editor. Between these two extremes is one of the most useful tools for any author, regardless of the stage of her writing career: the writer’s feedback group.

Here are a few things I’ve learned in my personal experience with feedback groups.

  1. Group “meetings” can be in-person, via email, in an online chat-room, through private website exchanges, or even via snail mail. Personally I think the group dynamic is more active and, therefore, more helpful when the meeting is a face-to-face encounter. This is not always practical or possible, but this century’s internet options are almost as good.
  2. Group members are typically “selected” by fate and opportunity. This is not a bad way to pick a group or a new member. The important thing is for all members to respect one another’s opinions and to agree on the format, such as that described in item 3.
  3. Group members should establish a time limit for each reviewed item. Author of work being reviewed should specify what and why work is being presented and, in particular, what assistance Author needs. Another member of the group—not the Author—should read aloud the piece being considered. Members should offer only positive comments, suggestions, and questions, keeping negative criticism to themselves (remember what Mom said—“If you can’t say …”). Reviewers should be brief and to the point to allow everyone to speak. Author should accept comments graciously, avoid rebuttals, and ask for clarification if a comment is unclear. Additional discussion should be taken offline from the group.
  4. Leaving the group is okay. A day may come when you are not getting everything you need from the group. Perhaps the membership dynamics have become uncomfortable for you or are no longer helpful. There are many reasons to leave and you will know when it’s time. Be courteous, give some notice, suggest a new member to replace you, and be on your way to your next writer’s feedback group.