“Your favorite novel or history or memoir is just someone’s last revision”- Patricia T. O’Conner.
When I was visiting my parents a few weeks ago, my dad gave me a book out of his collection he thought I’d enjoy…Woe Is I by Patricia T. O’Conner. I looked it up on Amazon to see how the reviews were (they’re good) and then I looked at other books by her and came across this one: Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know about Writing. I think I’m going to order a copy. It looks quite good. One of the reviewers put in her quote above, and that just really hit home for me.
I often tell people to strive for excellence, not perfection in writing. If you wait until your piece is perfect, you’ll never get it done. I know. I’ll read books I’ve written later and say to myself, “Ugh, I should have said it this way instead.” There are a million different ways to write the same thing. First you need to make it understandable and clear, then you need to give it some personality.
Her quote is the truth. Anything you read is just someone’s last revision. When you’re writing, keep that in mind. I’m not saying to forget about the editing process. Remember, if you spend 10 hours writing something, you need to spend at least 5 hours editing it yourself. You need to let your writing sit, go over it again, and get a neutral party’s feedback. Once you are confident it reads well and there are no errors, let it go.
They say you never forget what you were doing during the most serious news events in your life. I remember when the space shuttle blew up, I was in high school, I believe, and we were home on a snow day. I was laying on our brown pattern carpet in the family room, propped up on my elbows, when the report broke through the show I was watching.
I can remember that I was visiting my friend the night before her wedding (and on my birthday), when O.J. had his infamous police chase.
And I can remember exactly what I was doing during the morning of September 11, 2001 when the Twin Towers were hit by the planes. My then-18 month son was watching cartoons, when my husband called me from work to tell me to turn on CNN. I said, “that’s okay, Kyle’s really into this cartoon.” He said, “No, you don’t understand, this is serious.” So I did. Here I was with an 18 month old, just found out I was pregnant with my second son, home alone, and stunned by what was happening, wondering if Harrisburg, PA would be next. I took my son to the neighborhood park and kept looking for planes overhead.
Today, MSNBC has the actual broadcast of the Today Show from September 11, 2001. The sense of confusion and shock with the hosts and the interviewees is just amazing. I’m splitting my time between working on my laptop and glancing up at the TV.
And everytime I write the date, I keep wanting to write September 11, 2001, just like, on the day of my birthday I always want to write my birth year.
Remembering all those who lost a loved one, or who were forever changed by this day, 5 years ago…
Lauren
I got an email that really made my day yesterday. One of my past clients, who will remain nameless at this point, emailed me to tell me he attended a writers’ conference and pitched his book to an editor and an agent. The agent has asked for the first 75 pages, a synopsis, and a release. The editor read the first few pages and said he was ready for an agent. As a bonus, he met someone who can help him make connections to start his speaking platform.
This thrilled me. My client is an excellent storyteller. And he has a very interesting police career which he turned into his memoirs. He is not a trained writer and needed someone to content edit and line edit his book to help with flow, grammar and readability. He also made it perfectly clear that he wanted the book to keep “his” voice and didn’t want someone taking it in a direction he didn’t want. That’s what I did. He and I bounced ideas off each other, added some content, deleted some content, worked on transitions, grammar, tense, etc. and got it to the point where we could have done a final proofread and self-published it.
However, my client wanted to go with the traditional publishing route and find an agent. He has sent out some queries, and also attended this conference and met some people face-to-face and got them to read the first few pages of his book. I’m very excited about his progress. I have to admit, it also makes me feel good that, together, we are beginning to see the “fruits of our labor”.
Speaking of writers’ conferences, they’re a great investment of time and money (usually!). I’ll be attending the Express Yourself Authors’ Conference in Valley Forge, PA at the end of the month. I’ll learn new ways to market, get publicity, and sell more books–for myself and my clients.
I’ve heard this expression before, but never has it been popping up more often for me than in the last few days. I read an article in John Kremer’s newsletters about a self-published author’s search for an agent and the author referred to that statement, which I passed on to a former client who is also looking for an agent. He, too, is looking for an agent and starting to get discouraged. His book is awesome, (I know because I was his editor) and his query letter was good too (I wrote it), and I know that he just needs to find the “right” agent (or publisher) for his specific book.
Then, I was at a CPAFE meeting yesterday where Casey Sheehe was speaking, and boy was she a great guest. She is a sales expert and had some great advice. The “numbers game” expression popped up there too. To be a successful business owner, you need to get used to rejection. She used to work in timeshare sales and said that, as a sales rep, you’re only expected to get 2 sales out of every 10 people you pitch to. Think about that a moment. That’s getting a no, yes, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no. That’s a lot of nos. Despite that, if you can got a 20% sales rate, you made a 6-figure income. Not bad, huh?
The third instance of this phrase has come up doing my article proposal tracking and response for a magazine publisher I work for. There were 75 articles in the queue when I got answers from the editor in chief about whether he was interested. The authors that submitted multiple proposals usually had at least one accepted, where authors that only submitted one were simply facing a one-time “yes” or “no” response.
Back to my own turn at playing the numbers game.
Over the weekend, I was talking to a neighbor who asked what I did for a living. I told her that I was a ghostwriter, editor, and author. She said that she thinks she could be a good editor, because anytime she reads a book, she always finds the typos.
In my book, that’s not editing. That’s proofreading. They are frequently interchanged. Here are The Hidden Helper’s definitions of the terms. Editing means “correcting, revising or adapting” and proofreading means “to detect and mark errors”. It might take 60 hours to edit a book, yet take 6 to proofread it. Those are just rough terms.
When I content edit a book, I’m looking for clarity, flow of information, gaps in information, consistency in the ideas and details in the text, making sure the book stays focused and proves its point, taking out information that isn’t relevant, or suggesting the author adds information that is. When I line edit a book, I’m looking for more grammar, tense, person, subject/verb agreement, etc., the more technical English language issues. And when I proofread, I’m looking for typos, missing words, appropriate punctuation, etc.
So that’s your terminology lesson for the day.