Even editors need editing

There’s a new red pen in town.

Scott D. Southard is the latest and greatest to join awesomeness with us at RebeccaTDickson.com. Why? Because he’s brilliant. Obviously. And because I am but one person and cannot keep up with demand.

Scott’s a professional editor, the author of six books (one of which I had the pleasure of editing when I launched this biz), and works with authors all over the country. And now he’s available to help YOU whip your manuscript into shape. I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere, actually. But I need extra hands (and an incredible editing mind) around here. Too many of you love us. Such a difficult problem to have. Said no one ever.

Anyway, say hi to Scott. Visit his website. Check out his books. Keep him in mind for editing. And read below. It’s him, telling all of you how we met.

xo

 

The Necessary Humbling of Editing

Dunce CapA lot of fantasies, daydreams and rainbows cloud the world of writing. It’s not surprising. Actually, it’s completely natural since we spend so much of our time making up stories as writers. Why wouldn’t we have stories about the stories?

Have you ever seen that scene in a TV show or movie where a writer finishes a book or script? The writer may raise his hands in triumph over an old typewriter or do a little dance, then we jump forward in time to their inevitable success.

We don’t see the struggle of getting the book out, finding an audience, working with an agent or publisher or, more importantly, editing. And let’s be honest, editing is not as exciting as the victory dance of a finished book, or the sparks of coming up with ideas around a first draft.

Like I said, it’s a fantasy. I have even been known to say much of the art around true writing happens in the editing. It is there that a work is fine-tuned, perfected. This year, I worked with a series of different editors. First for my novel, A Jane Austen Daydream (which was published by Madison Street Publishing) and then for my novel Maximilian Standforth and the Case of the Dangerous Dare.

So why do I love editing so much? Because I learned about its importance the hard way. Yes, I have an editing and writing horror story, and I am about to share it. Be prepared, this is about to haunt you like a poltergeist… a writing poltergeist.

My Horror Story

I entered the first year of Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award. For those who don’t know, this is a contest Amazon holds each year to promote CreateSpace and the idea of an author community, since a good part of the contest is writers reviewing each others’ works. To be honest, I could write an entire post on why I think this contest is badly designed (and promotes the questionable practice of review exchanges and fakeries), but that’s for another time.

One of my books was chosen that year to go onto the next round, which meant a sample was available to the public (and other contestants) for review. I was “lucky” to have my book selected to be reviewed by an actual critic from Publishers Weekly.

Now here comes the horror story. The Publishers Weekly reviewer treated my book as though it was a final published work, not a draft of a book in a contest. Consider that.

So instead of reviewing the plot, the characters, the themes, etc., the reviewer pretty much spent all their words attacking my grammar.

It is a draft of a book in a contest, you jackass reviewer. What did you expect?

Okay, take a deep breath, Scott. I still have some issues there, it seems.

Well, I was so embarrassed by the reviewer, I requested my work be removed from the competition and taken off the Amazon page – just so I could save that blasted unfair review from tainting my book for years to come.

And that is why I will always use an editor.

The Three Kinds of Editors

For the editing of Maximilian Standforth and the Case of the Dangerous Dare, I worked with Becky T. Dickson and the experience was great. She is the kind of editor I appreciate. In other words, she actually read the book (experiencing the book as a book) while also catching editing mistakes, repetitions and writing errors.

See, I’ve found there are three different kinds of editors out there:

  1. The Clones. We all know these editors. We give them some writing and they return it covered in red ink, every word and sentence changed. These editors are dangerous in my opinion since they are (probably without realizing it) changing the voice of the author from their own to… well, the editor’s voice. And another clone is born.
  2. Yellow Brick Road. These are the editors I like to work with, like Becky, they recognize your book as a book, catch mistakes, but don’t edit to the point of changing your voice. They leave it as your book, but better and cleaner. If you work with an editor like this, stay on the path to the end. You will arrive at the book you want.
  3. Too Nice For Their Own Good. These editors will make you feel great about yourself. They will pat you on your back, but they will miss so many overarching mistakes, just merely scanning for grammar and spelling. There is even a good chance they won’t really even read your book, because they’re too focused on just looking for common errors. Side note: When you ask a family member or friend to edit your book, chances are you will get a manuscript back like this. Oh, it feels nice, but it will never be enough. Never ever.

Do yourself a favor, do the research to find the best editor for you and your book, and save the victory dance for later.

My Editing of Maximilian

Maximilian Standforth and the Case of the Dangerous Dare, CoverWorking with Becky was a lot of fun. She has a very “bold” way of editing, calling a spade a spade… No, better yet, calling a spade a f*cking spade.

Want another reason why it is important to have an editor? Well, the first thing Becky noticed is I misspelled Maximilian’s name. If you heard a loud “thump” noise coming from Michigan a few months ago, that was the sound of my head hitting my desk.

She was right. I thought I was using the same spelling as Daphne Du Maurier did in Rebecca, but I wasn’t. And from that moment of startlingly revelation we were off.

Becky has a nice way of doing this, using bold and highlighting to draw attention to her changes and asking the occasional question. One thing I appreciated is she was able to point out repetitions in my writing. All writers do this. It’s not surprising. We get stuck on a certain expression or word and we run with it, feeling it as natural as the pretzels and coke nearby the computer as we type. (Well, that may be just me).

One thing Becky did that I found interesting and new was pointing out each time I used “There is” at the start of a sentence. Now, the funny thing is my first reaction was to feel protective of “There is.” Heck, one of my favorite lines in Hamlet begins that way:

There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

That’s Shakespeare, people.

But in changing a sentence away from it, I noticed the descriptions improved, became richer. So I made some of those changes.

That is not to say I made all of the changes the editor requested. A writer shouldn’t do that. They are suggestions. For example, Becky doesn’t like some of the cliches I used in the book, but they are intentional. It is a period pulp work in its essence (hiding a very experimental book of literature underneath), so a book of that style would have cliches like that. It’s part of the norm.

But that is what an editor is for, not just for catching our writing “oops” moments, but also for making us rethink our work. To make it stronger. And I saw that in every finished chapter Becky emailed to me.

Power of Second-Guessing

Sometimes I wish life could automatically come with an editor. They could review each sentence I am about to say aloud or correct emails and tweets. I wish I could trust my brain, but I have learned a long time ago not to. It seems to enjoy getting me in trouble.

Right now, I’m in the process of deciding what to do with the new novel I wrote last year, Permanent Spring Showers. Do I try the traditional big publishing road? Do I find an agent? Do I find a smaller publisher? Go indie? Or do I self-publish and just get it out there?

I haven’t decided yet. But as I look over my manuscript, the one thing I am certain of is I need an editor.

I’m sure your book does too.

*

Author Pic - Scott D SouthardNeed an editor? Scott D. Southard’s services are exclusively available via this site. When you inquire, ask for him.

Scott is the author of the novels A Jane Austen Daydream, Maximilian Standforth and the Case of the Dangerous Dare, My Problem With Doors and Megan. You can find them via his Amazon author page or you can pick up a copy of Doors and Megan on Google eBooks.

Scott is also a busy blogger, you can follow his entertaining (and insightful) posts at sdsouthard.com.

13 ways to be a better writer

Because we writers all share the same unending, cavernous, soul-sucking struggles. And because 13 is my favorite number. (I was born on a Friday the 13th.) Here’s what some famous and insanely talented writers say about keeping your writer mojo. Yo…

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3f/Ray_Bradbury_2009_cropped.jpgRay Bradbury

In his 2001 keynote address at Point Loma Nazarene University’s Writer’s Symposium By the Sea:

“Get rid of friends who don’t believe in you.” 

and

Remember, with writing, what you’re looking for is just one person to come up and tell you, ‘I love you for what you do.’ Or, failing that, someone who says, “You’re not nuts like people say.’

***

Charles Bukowski

In an interview in Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters 1963-1993, Bukowski talks about his poem, “Friendly Advice to a Lot of Young Men.”

Your poem says that one is better off living in a barrel than he is writing poetry. Would you give the same advice today?

I guess what I meant is that you are better off doing nothing than doing something badly. But the problem is that bad writers tend to have the self-confidence, while the good ones tend to have self-doubt. So the bad writers tend to go on and on writing crap and giving as many readings as possible to sparse audiences. These sparse audiences consist mostly of other bad writers waiting their turn to go on, to get up there and let it out in the next hour, the next week, the next month, the next sometime… When failures gather together in an attempt at self-congratulation, it only leads to a deeper and more abiding failure. The crowd is the gathering place of the weakest; true creation is a solitary act.

and

“There’s nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will. Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him. And the longer he is held back the stronger he will become, like a mass of rising water against a dam. There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter, you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it.”

***

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Stephen_King%2C_Comicon.jpg

Stephen King

In his wildly popular On Writing:

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

and

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair–the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.”

and (my personal favorite)

“… if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”

***

James Patterson

As quoted by Mark Sullivan (a co-author) in a 2012 article from Publisher’s Weekly:

“What most people who attempt commercial fiction don’t understand is that you have to write the way people talk… You can’t make the prose rigid or dense and expect the normal, busy reader to turn the page, much less stick with you to the very end.”

***

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/David_Foster_Wallace.jpgDavid Foster Wallace

In his 1998 essay, “The Nature of Fun”:

“In the beginning, when you first start out trying to write fiction, the whole endeavor’s about fun. You don’t expect anybody else to read it. You’re writing almost wholly to get yourself off. To enable your own fantasies and deviant logics and to escape or transform parts of yourself you don’t like. And it works—and it’s terrific fun. Then, if you have good luck and people seem to like what you do, and you actually start to get paid for it, and get to see your stuff professionally typeset and bound and blurbed and reviewed and even (once) being read on the a.m. subway by a pretty girl you don’t even know it seems to make it even more fun. For a while.

Then things start to get complicated and confusing, not to mention scary. Now you feel like you’re writing for other people, or at least you hope so. You’re no longer writing just to get yourself off, which—since any kind of masturbation is lonely and hollow—is probably good. But what replaces the onanistic motive? You’ve found you very much enjoy having your writing liked by people, and you find you’re extremely keen to have people like the new stuff you’re doing. The motive of pure personal starts to get supplanted by the motive of being liked, of having pretty people you don’t know like you and admire you and think you’re a good writer. Onanism gives way to attempted seduction, as a motive.

Now, attempted seduction is hard work, and its fun is offset by a terrible fear of rejection. Whatever “ego” means, your ego has now gotten into the game. Or maybe “vanity” is a better word. Because you notice that a good deal of your writing has now become basically showing off, trying to get people to think you’re good. This is understandable. You have a great deal of yourself on the line, writing—your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky thing about fiction writing; a certain amount of vanity is necessary to be able to do it all, but any vanity above that certain amount is lethal.”

***

J.K. Rowling

“Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have ‘essential’ and ‘long overdue’ meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg.”

and

“You have to resign yourself to the fact that you waste a lot of trees before you write anything you really like, and that’s just the way it is. It’s like learning an instrument, you’ve got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot, cause I wrote an awful lot before I wrote anything I was really happy with.”

***

File:George Orwell press photo.jpgGeorge Orwell

In his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language”:

Don’t be a pretentious arse. Foreign words or expressions are used to give an air of cultural elegance, even though they sometimes have a certain je ne sais quoi. Words like categorical, virtual, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, phenomena, only embellish and give an air of untrue scientific impartiality. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, triumphant, age-old, inexorable or words like realm, throne, chariot often dignify war and politics.

Bad writers will also employ terms with Latin origin instead of Saxon because of their “grandeur.” They end up with unnecessary words like ameliorate, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous.

 

***

File:Cheryl strayed 2012.jpg

Cheryl Strayed

No list of expert writing advice would be complete without her wisdom. After all, it was her frank advice column on TheRumpus.net that set me down the author path:

“Write like a motherfucker.”

 

 

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