Am I Being...Insensitive?

While the world is being terrorized by the worst pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu, here I am sitting in my basement blogging away about my insignificant fiction project. As people are dying in scary numbers, I find myself preoccupied in my own little made-up world.

Is that wrong?

Shouldn't I at least acknowledge that we are living in frightening times, that not only are people dying, but the global economy is in free fall and the prospects on both accounts are grim? Shouldn't I at least find some way to contribute to the cause? Shouldn't I stand in front of a hospital and thank those brave souls who are busy saving lives while endangering their own? Run around and deliver meals to elderly shut-ins? Contribute to food banks? Give blood? Make phone calls for political candidates in hopes of getting rid of Trump?

Well, I do some of those things. Our charitable giving has gone way up and I will give blood. But mainly I'm doing what the experts recommend. I stay home and maintain social distancing, which is really important since I'm in a high risk category.

Still, under the circumstances, isn't this blog just a selfish indulgence?

I say not really. Sure, the pandemic is front and center in the news and has profoundly affected our lives. But the pandemic isn't 100 percent of our lives. People are still engaged in other things. Many people are working from home in jobs that are not especially significant when compared with the magnitude of the virus.

And many are using their extended time at home learning new skills. They're baking bread, fixing up the house, learning a new language, dusting off the old guitar, etc. It doesn't mean that they're ignoring the menace of Covid-19, they're just going on with their lives despite Covid-19.

So it's perfectly right that I keep writing, which means tweaking my current novel and working on my next...as well as writing these posts. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to stick with the premise of this blog and will avoid addressing that ugly pandemic in future posts.

What an Editor CAN and CANNOT Do for Your Book

Since it seems more people are tuning into this blog, I'll try to post more often--it's just sometimes I don't feel I have anything worthwhile to say! 😐

As I forge my way through my manuscript and incorporate changes from my editor, I've come to a greater understanding of how to set expectations when enlisting the services of a professional editor. First and foremost, don't expect your editor to write your book for you. Seems obvious, but many writers expect that an editor can take their mess of a book and magically make it bloom and sparkle like the brightest stars in the sky.

Won't happen.

Editors aren't like Rumplestiltskin--they can't take your pile of hay and spin it into gold. Here's what an editor can do for you:

• Address issues such as plot, pacing, thematics, character development, narrative sequencing and chronology
• Special concerns you may have as an author, such as genre and marketing strategy
• Copyedit/line edit focusing on flow, punctuation, grammar, word choice, syntax, consistency of language
• Continuity of plot, setting, and character traits

That's a broad range of issues that any good editor will tackle, which is why talented, experienced editors charge a lot and spend many hours on your book.

But here's what an editor won't, or can't, do for you:

• Rewrite your book--hire a ghost writer for that!
• Take what is essentially an unpublishable novel and turn it into a bestseller
• Take a poorly thought-out story idea and bland, two-dimensional characters and magically transform those deficiencies into compelling literature
• Most editors will not recommend specific agents or publishers for your manuscript, since publishing markets change constantly

As you can see, editors take on a great deal of responsibility when they agree to work on your book. I've found that when working with editors their main value lies in closely reading your work and  helping you polish, tighten, and add depth to what is (hopefully) an already strong, well-written manuscript. In fact, the very best editors will reject jobs if they review a sample and find the writing too weak to warrant their time and effort!

So before you hire an editor, my advice is to go through your manuscript and rewrite as often as it takes until you deem it as close to perfection as you can get. If you can find some beta readers to read and comment on your work, that's even better. But your book must be as good as you can get it before you commit to the expense of hiring an editor. Otherwise you're wasting his/her time as well as your  own time and money.

I'm convinced that by the time I'm through with my final edits in the next couple of weeks, I will have a super-strong manuscript ready to do battle in the publishing market free-for-all. 

I welcome comments and suggestions on this or any other posts and will respond to all of them! Heck, I'm stuck at home just like you! 

Writing Is Editing

One benefit of being shut in the house during the current pestilence is the chance to focus on my fiction project, COME THE HARPIES. Having enlisted the services of a seasoned professional editor, I spent the last two weeks inputting line-edit changes that have both tightened the manuscript through the elimination of over 3,000 words(!) and enhanced word selection in dozens of cases.

The next step is going through developmental suggestions, which include fixing plot inconsistencies, sharpening characterizations, leveraging situations for greater dramatic effect, adding telling details that provide color and impact, among other weighty matters. I boiled down my editor's notes to 44 issues that I will address over the next three to four weeks. I will then follow up with the editor and discuss how I approached her changes and suggestions.

This sounds like a lot of work, but it's really not too bad. Most of the changes are minor and some reflect stupid mistakes on my part with names, chronologies, and quirks that crop up over the course of writing a 100,000-word manuscript. Most of what I'll be doing is fixing those mistakes and adding polish and depth.

I know it's an effective story and my editor agrees. She wrote: "(The book) has a gripping premise coupled with a compelling voice--fast-paced, funny, timely, thought-provoking, and above all, entertaining. There's enough action and excitement...to keep readers satisfied, but it all ties into weightier issues of humanity, autonomy, politics and the environment; and it plays out in a setting that is close enough to our current society that readers will find it relatable, and exaggerated just enough that they'll find it unsettling."

Yeah, I was going for that! The thing is, I think the story is so timely that I want to somehow get this thing published ASAP to fully leverage the relevance of the story to things that are going on in the world today.

However, I still need to find some way to grab the interest of the almighty gatekeepers of the publishing industry!