Robin Layne's Blog: From the Red, Read Robin - Posts Tagged "editing"

This morning, a variation on the first theme came to me:

From the Read Red Robin
or:
From the Red Read Robin

Today I have broken my pattern by waking up early . . . but I don't want to get worms. I would rather get ideas. I was told that some writers prefer to write early in the morning when they are half asleep, in a semi-dream state. Perhaps that is the same reason I like staying up late doing fun or creative things. I actually enjoy pushing myself into the night. Some nights, I am so tired I think I will go to bed early, but some little thing interests me, and the next thing you know, I've got my second wind. But in the morning, I feel like a zombie for hours--lately, even after I've had my caffeine. I prefer tea to coffee, as my system doesn't like the acid in coffee.

I know it looks strange having a book I'm published in on my "To Read" list. It's just that it's been a while since Medley of Fiction was published, and while I know I read at least some of it, I can't remember if I read all of it. I may have finished it back then, and even written a review of it on another site. Are we allowed to mention other sites here? Perhaps even to transfer reviews from them? If it's kosher for both sites, I could import quite a few. And earlier, I did reviews in on MySpace, where my blog was called "Hatching My Eggs." I lost interest in MySpace when I couldn't view everything on it. Facebook became the new space for visiting with people, but it's different. And I've never ventured into Twitter yet--not sure what my place in it will be yet (bird though I may be). A person's got to spend some time away from the computer sometime! (Which reminds me, I think I made a mistake in ordering a color computer version of a local writer's newsletter when I could get it in black ink in the mail; sure, it probably comes a little sooner this way, but I don't want to print out something that extensive in color, so reading it requires even MORE time at the computer. Remind me to change my subscription to a copy I can easily take with me to ride on the bus.)
In addition to my writing, I am also an editor. I am currently taking an online editing certificate program from UC Berkeley. In June, I graduated from Portland State University with a BA in English, minor in writing, and part of that minor allowed me to be on the editing staff of Ooligan Press, the only student-run publisher of trade books in the world. It was an exciting experience, editing fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and being part of the general publishing process. The university offers a Masters program in publishing. After all the years I have been in college, and also away from college doing other things, I was still an undergraduate when I was there.
But about Medley of Fiction: From what I remember, it's a great collection, from what was a great website, AuthorsByDesign.com. My contribution is a poem called "Eros at My Window." You may know this already, but Eros is the Greek god of romantic/sexual love. Our culture knows him more commonly by his Roman name, Cupid, but I don't like that name as much because it conjures images of adorable baby angels. Eros' darts are real, and they hurt when you wake up from your daze of infatuation. Don't get me wrong, I think erotic love can be wonderful, but in its place, in the balance of the other loves, with agape (unselfish divine love) at its core. For more of a sense of what I mean, I recommend reading C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves, or looking up "love" in a good Greek Lexicon.

I think Medley of Fiction had a very small run, but it does have an ISBN, so I was able to add the book to the site and so get this author page. I have published other poems and short stories, but not in books with ISBN numbers. (Just found out another book in my portfolio has an ISBN; I'm going to add it to the site as well. It has fiction, nonfiction, and poetry of mine in it.) The poems were mostly in newspapers and in a newsletter I used to edit. The short stories are in other small-run books and online; one was in The Lamp-Post of the Southern C.S. Lewis Society. I have also enjoyed doing what is misleadingly called desktop publishing--creating a book of poems, lyrics, and stories, and making a number of smaller booklets to give away, trade, and sell. I have also had stories and poems in literary journals that don't have ISBNs, including two Write Around Portland anthologies and the literary journal of Portland Community College Cascade campus (Pointed Circle). I might write about my experiences with some or all of the above. You can give feedback on what you'd like to read about.

Thank you to my new friends on this site and to the advice and camaraderie you have provided already! One friend has helped me see ways I can improve the short story posted in my writings called "Blood Ties." The version I posted is the one that won an AuthorsByDesign contest, but we can always improve our writing with time. I am thinking of making improvements and re-posting it, but for now I will wait and see if more improvements come to mind. There is also the consideration of time juggling.

Now I feel like going back to bed. Just not a morning person! I tried.

Since May of 2012, I have been taking U.C. Berkeley's extension program in editing, and as of August 6, 2013, I have finished all four consecutive online courses and am waiting to receive my certificate in the mail. It was quite an experience learning with adult students all over the world who share my passion in catching the errors in writing and helping others improve their self expression. The class was recommended by a local professional editor who taught a one-day class in starting your own editing business. Thank you for the tip, Charity Heller! And thank you for your class. I actually started my freelance editing and writing business, Robin Layne Enterprises, soon after taking Charity's workshop. I edit fiction as well as non-fiction, but fiction is my favorite. Besides my own freelance editing, I've had practice with fiction editing (and poetry editing, too--believe it or not, it can be done!) at Portland State University, where I earned my bachelor's degree in English, minor in writing, in spring 2012. All this after a 20-year break from school in which I raised a child by myself and thought I would never go back to college and finish what I started so long ago.

The editing sequence, I learned when I had almost finished it, includes editing of non-fiction only. A good number of us hope the program will be expanded to include fiction, in spite of learning that it doesn't pay as well. My last instructor, bless her heart, tried to convince me that non-fiction editing is better, to no avail.

The first class in the sequence is Grammar, Mechanics, and Usage for Editors, and includes lots of information about the appropriate terms and rules as well as practice copyediting. The second class is Introduction to Copyediting. Students almost exclusively use the track changes function in Word to do their editing. The third class is Intermediate Copyediting. The fourth is a big leap, Substantive Editing. This fourth and final course includes more copyediting practice with the addition of developmental editing (which I call seeing the forest rather than just the trees) and information about being part of a publishing team (something I had real-life practice with at PSU's Ooligan Press, but there is always more to learn). The final exam was another leap for me, long and difficult, and I wasn't the only person who wished I had another week to work on it. The best part of the exam was figuring out how to tackle the 3-part project, reinforcing knowledge about how I learn. For me, I had to write things down to think things through, so that was what I had to start with. The file in which I kept these notes evolved into the memo to the hypothetical authors I was editing for. I nibbled at the project from the sides, a bite from Part 3, Part 2, Part 1, and went back and forth until the thing took shape.

Everyone has a different learning style. Finding out yours is perhaps half the battle of getting an education. I hope you learn what works for you and that you never stop learning and growing all your life.

You might say my career is now going to the dogs … or not. What I mean to say, always loving a good pun, is that I am now on the editing staff of Barking Rain Press (BRP). I’d be doing summersaults if this older dog was able to, because it’s the publisher I most wanted to work for.

I discovered BRP at Wordstock last October. Publisher Sheri Gormley sat at one of booths, with books the company has published on display. Barking Rain’s motto is “Books with Bite.” I learned that the dog on its logo is named Elvis (an incarnation of the rock star nobody has guessed yet?)

BRP publishes fiction and nonfiction for adults and young adults. Looking at the covers and reading some of the blurbs got me excited; not only was this a publisher I would love to edit for. Judging from some of the books on display, it was the first publisher I’d seen that takes the kind of mixture of genres I am writing in my vampire series. (Their title that most resembles my series in progress is—I kid you not—The Celibate Succubus.)I talked to Ms. Gormley about the possibility of employment. She gave me the name of the editor from whom to request a copyediting test. I did as she asked and took the test, using The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition, as requested. CMOS, as those in the business call it, is the standard for book publishers (as the AP Stylebook is for newspapers).

Editor Ti Locke’s response was that my copyediting skills were good but that I had missed a few matters of punctuation. This humbled me, because I think of punctuation as my strong suit. She said I had not changed the quotation marks from the straight to the curly kind, and I had not formatted the ellipses properly. Well, I had no excuse for the straight quotations, and I don’t know why I didn’t correct them, but I remembered being taught from my online Berkeley class to include a space between each dot in an ellipses, and I did that. Locke said in her email that she would pass my test on to Gormley. I expected to hear from Gormley one way or another, but as the silent months dragged on, I assumed I was not chosen, and I turned my attention to other projects. I took a class that helped me immensely with organization, prioritizing, and even setting and pursuing my most precious goals. I put together a very serviceable planning book small enough to carry around with me everywhere. It’s a lifesaver. And I made headway on my vampire novel by dovetailing some goal managing advice from the class and information about story premises and character emotional arcs from a speaker at a Willamette Writers meeting whose name I unfortunately cannot find at the moment (which says I still have more organizing to do!). Thanks to learning to write a premise, and to focus character arcs around that premise, to using visualization to kick-start my motivation, to setting goals and to scheduling days to accomplish them, the first of my Anti-Vampirism Society stories is more in focus. I updated the numbering of my chapter files, renamed some chapters, rewrote my extended synopsis, rearranged some of the story’s events to make better sense, edited five chapters (one a week), and completed emotional arcs for four of the main characters and one minor character. Unfortunately, the class required me to take on other projects and I had to slow the writing plans. Once the class ended, I stopped working on the character arcs; poor Melanie is stuck in the process, and Alex hasn’t entered into an arc yet at all. (Noah could be telling them to hurry up.)

You can also read about that process, and see my new painting of the vampire Carletta, on my AVS blog, RobinLayneAuthor.Wordpress.com.

I receive a monthly bus pass from an organization that has been helping me prepare for and find work. Toward the end of March, the pass came wrapped in a form asking me what companies I wanted to work for and what jobs I had applied for. It was due back in about a week. I was surprised, but I got busy. I took out some information from past book fairs, sorted it all into categories, and wrote emails to all the publishers that might be offering jobs for editors. And I finally took my head out of the sand and went through CMOS’s entire section on ellipses. There I found plenty of information on where that confounded punctuation should be used, but not a single instance of how to lay out those three dots. I wrote to Ti Locke about it. She told me that using a space before and after the three dots but no spaces between them is the only format recognized by InDesign. (If you haven’t fallen asleep reading this, you may be an editor yet.) It took a few emails back and forth—and I worried that I wore her patience thin—before I realized that the formatting information on ellipses came from the online version of CMOS, which had sections extending beyond those in the book. Locke also said in her response to my initial punctuation question that some of my correspondence might have been misplaced in the busyness of book production. So the humble ellipses just might have put me back on their company’s radar.

Meanwhile, I looked on Craigslist under writing/editing jobs. I applied to Liberty Voice, an online newspaper, with hopes of writing features and reviews and also becoming one of its copyeditors. They told me to write three stories, one a day over three days. I did. I worried I would run out of subject matter for stories at such a pace. Then they admitted me to their “boot camp,” which required me to Skype every day with the company for an untold number of hours, plus write a story every day. And not just any story. It had to use as the main word in its headline one of the subjects of the leading articles on Google news. I know the idea was create stories that might go viral. But I decided as far back as 1979 that I did not want to be a newspaper reporter, and now, though I tried, I couldn’t find a single headline on the list that inspired a story I was capable of writing. If I knew celebrities or politicians I could interview, it would be different. Without a way in to places I didn’t really want to be in the first place, I couldn’t possibly meet a few hours’ deadline to write an article. The whole process was making a nervous wreck of me. By Easter weekend, I quit.

When next I met with my job counselor, he told me I wasn’t required to fill out the job search report. The assistant just started including those to keep people from seeing the shape of the bus pass in the envelope.

Following my quitting Liberty Voice, my computer quit. That PC, which my friend Christopher had given me, had been freezing on me for a long time, and it did so more and more frequently. The “blue screen of doom” error message appeared for what I was sure was the last time. I couldn’t have gone on with Liberty Voice if I’d wanted to.
Another friend, Kevin, saved most of my files to a flash drive and then confirmed that the PC was a goner. He recommended I get a laptop with a loading dock, and promised to price some on Craigslist. We thought the cost would be a few hundred dollars. I believed the employment agency would pay for a new computer for me, considering my line of work. Kevin called me later with amazing news: He had found two laptops with loading docks for sale at the same place for $50 and $60, and the $50 one was the better of the two. It had more memory and could burn DVDs, he said. I gave him the go-ahead to snatch up this bargain.

Meanwhile, I kept trying to reach my job counselor. Finally an assistant told me my counselor had said they could not finance the computer “because it isn’t necessary for employment.” I was confused and angry. I had hoped I could use the money to help my daughter with some needs.

The Thursday after Easter, I finally got to talk to my counselor—itself a miracle. He explained that the agency couldn’t fund a computer unless I had an offer for a job that required a home computer, and they had to make sure the computer fit the requirements of the job. My anger disappeared.

That afternoon, because Kevin hadn’t finished loading files onto my new laptop, I was using a computer at a library. I received an email from Sheri Gormley asking me if I was still interested in editing for Barking Rain Press.

So the day that I learned the requirements to get a computer paid for was the day I met those requirements. I won’t go into detail about the things that went wrong with the new computer and the hard work that Christopher went through to fix it. But it’s working now ... and so am I.

I like to name my computers. The last one was Frank-N-Stein. I’m keeping Frank until I get the rest of my files transferred to Ernie. Ernie is the newbie’s name because I noticed its official name is “ERN” with some numbers added. I haven’t taken Ernie on any outings because I’m not sure the touch pad will work properly before it gets the driver it asks for every time I boot, and also because, heck, this is western Oregon, it can rain any time, and I don’t have a protective case.

My new job is exciting. I’m not just a copyeditor, or just a proofreader, or just an acquisitions editor. Right now I’ve joined the rest of the crew in going through the slush pile, picking submissions to read, and deciding, based on four sample chapters, a synopsis, and a marketing plan, whether we should reject the submission or ask to see the complete manuscript. At least two reviews are required for each book before a decision is made. Later, when I find a book I really like, I will champion it, being its editor from beginning to end. When that book is accepted for publication, I receive a small lump sum. Upon publication, my name will be printed in the book as the editor, and I will begin receiving royalties for every book sold. I also get a small lump sum for proofreading a book—going over it one last time to check for small errors and formatting problems before it is prepared for press.

This is not a job I expect to make a lot of money on, unless any books I edit sell very well. But I believe it is a company I can get behind, it is work I love, and it’s a wonderful opportunity to learn and grow in my field. I am currently reading the third submission I picked to read. I’m loving this submission. And I’m loving the job. I am noticing plenty of instances of all things working out to my good—no matter how bad, disappointing, or annoying they seem at first. I am rejoicing! Rowf!

Check out BRP at BarkingRainPress.org

When people learn I’m writing vampire fiction, many say, “Good for you, that’s a very popular subject right now.” And they’re right. Vampire books abound, you can take your pick of vampire shows and movies, rock artists sing about them, and the web abounds with them.

Why are people so interested in vampires today?

One reason is that the vampire holds time still, freezing youth in its place. The fountain of youth holds such an appeal that some people, fictional or real, will pay any price for it—even blood. Even their souls.

Read the rest on my other blog:

The Vampire's Lure of Youthful Beauty

The blog post introduced here was inspired by the blog of someone writing something quite different from my vampire series. I am very familiar with her soon-to-be released science fiction novel, "Never Again," because I have the wonderful fortune of being its editor.

While reading submissions soon after joining the staff of Barking Rain Press, I fell in love with Heather Starsong's manuscript. Written in poetic prose, her charming story of an 80-year-old woman transformed by compassionate extra-terrestrials. It made me cry, and still does. I told the publisher I wanted to represent it, so I have been working with Heather on every stage of the process. We are wrapping up the copyediting today. We await the cover art, and in July we bring in the fresh eyes of a proofreader to help us catch any last-minute mistakes.

The book is slated to come out this August. Here is the link to Heather's information about it:
HeatherStarsong.com/NeverAgain.

And here are her reflections about youthful beauty, which inspired my own post on my vampire series blog:

The Lure of Youthful Beauty

Beauty is Dangerous

Beauty is Power

Hi, I have an apology to make. I've been sooo busy with writing, publishing, trying to publish, and editing, that I haven't had time to write here. I suppose I could have made time, but I strangely hold sacred the late hours of night, when I relax with Facebook, playing games and talking to people, sometimes reading other people's posts, and sometimes posting and commenting myself. Do you think that's lame? Maybe. But I seem to need downtime. You know what they say about all work and no play.

Anyway, I just submitted some poems to "Rattle" magazine and website, and I gave my Goodreads address as a contact point, because my website needs work, isn't what I'd like it to be, and is a big pain to correct and update. Why? Long story I may get into another time. But I haven't made that site much of a priority. I had no paid freelance editing business in 2016, but I have been busy editing another book with Barking Rain Press. As of yesterday, I completed my part in the copyedit. Whew! What an accomplishment!

The past year saw many new, exciting activities and progress. Some of them came about because I'd been part of a critique group that met in a local library, which went over my vampire novel chapters 1 or 2 at a time and looked at other stuff, too, like my first sonnet (Shakespearean style; it was hard to take in the rules, but once I got that down, the structure helped me compose). A lady named Minnie showed up one time and not only continued coming but got me interested in another group, The Portland Writers' Mill, which has about 20 people attending each time and keeps me busy with monthly contests and annual anthologies. I helped edit The Portland Writers' Mill Journal Volume 5, 2016, and contributed far more writing than I've ever published in one place before: 17 poems, 7 fiction short stories, and 12 pictures, including photographs, drawings, and paintings. The book was broken up into categories, mostly based on the subjects of the monthly contests. Being a newcomer, I only had a few contest entries, but I also submitted material I'd written earlier. The book is available on Amazon, which is also a first for me. It's $7.95, and proceeds go to the Cedar Mill Main Library in Portland, Oregon, where we meet.



As if that weren't enough, we published a second book right on the heels of the first: a thin volume of animal stories called Zeus and Bo and Fred and Jo and Co. This kid-friendly book features fan fiction about Sheila Deeth's animal and human characters from her "Tails of Mystery" series, plus other animal stories and poems. My contribution is "A Dog's Eye View," which tells about life in my family when I was still living with my parents, from the point of view of my beloved Mitsie, the only dog I ever owned. It's $5.95 or less.

I've placed in the monthly contests three times so far: 2 3rd places for the essay, "Home Was Where They Never Let Me In" and the fiction snippet, "As in Identical" (which you can read here: https://madmimi.com/p/b0c6d8 (it's the last story under "Showcase: Prompt Contest Winners"); and 1st place for the flash fiction story, "The Duprass" (named for a term coined in Kurt Vonnegut's book, "Cat's Cradle"). Winners are chosen by popular vote, ranked by each member after we read them on the website and comment on them as we feel moved. The group also has guest speakers and usually a critique, and a snack break, all packed into the hours 1-3 on the third Sunday of each month. I don't know how we manage to do so much every time. Must be a touch of magic!

I also had an article accepted by "The War Cry" magazine of the Salvation Army. It's a story about my adventures as a bell ringer, especially the winter of 2015. I was paid very handsomely. Also the same month, July, received decent pay for a story I provided for the "Miracles of Kindness" iPad book--now also available on Kindle and Nook, I just found out!-- http://www.sangamonhouse.com/. (My contribution is "Kindness from the Christian Writers' Group" in the section, "The Congregation Sings.") I expected to see my War Cry article in the 2016 Christmas issue, but, alas, it did not appear! And my inquiries about it have met quiet dead ends. I don't know how to find out what happened or will happen.

I'm happy to see that my career as a WRITER is taking off, although still frustrated that I haven't managed to put much work into, or get much help with, my vampire novel series. It's always been my dream to be a novelist. The critique group at the library stopped when the librarian who led it retired without prior notice. I kept the group going with Minnie and another friend from the Writers' Mill, but once a month critiques feel like they will take forever. I thought I would have to put in most of my time as an editor to survive financially. Although I am far from making a living wage from my freelance writing, I made more on writing than editing this year.

The same day I got the check from "The War Cry," I got an invitation to subscribe to "Poets and Writers" for only $9.95. I read most of my first issue of this semi-monthly magazine; with the second one, I got smart and read the classifieds first--the publishers with deadlines coming up--and that is how I discovered Rattle, which pays $100 per poem for its magazine, and $50 per poem for its website, and also has some other contests that pay great. And I'd been taught in college, "There's no money in poetry... but then, there's no poetry in money." I wrote a poem about money a while back, so I guess both parts of this saying are wrong! And that's good news for me, because I've written so many poems and continue to write more. Rattle likes a variety of subject matter and style, too. So do I.

My increased financial success began with a scary occasion: My rent went sky high at the beginning of 2016. I got desperate and got myself a job that was nothing like I or anyone else thought I'd find. Since May, I've worked most Saturdays in a posh theater, showing people private views of unreleased movie trailers and getting their opinions. It's fun. There hasn't been much work for me in December and early January, but it's okay, because the housing department changed its rules and my portion of the rent went WAY DOWN this year. Also, a cousin who likes my writing helped me out a lot financially. In addition to sending me some gift cards and lots of stamps, he also paid for a new computer when my laptop got a terminal problem. And I should be starting a second job soon, providing some meals and other household help for a young adult neighbor. I have been blessed in more ways than these. 2016 was a challenge, but a wonderful year for me ultimately, and 2017 looks great, too.

I'll probably think of more to say after I've posted this. But there's only so long you can sit in the same chair, and this is enough for now!

May you be blessed in every way, every day!

--The Red, Read, Robin

Written March 16, 2020 around 5:00 p.m.-- important to note because reality is changing drastically minute by minute lately. The following blog entry is my participation in an event of a MeetUp group called “Self-Quarantine Adventure Club.” It meets online, not in person.

I work in a theater, and it’s a theater where a lot of elderly people go. My job is to approach people there and invite them to watch previews for upcoming movies and give their opinions about them, then to reward them with $5 codes of Regal theater credit. It’s kind of a fun job, but I work hard, and my bus commute takes two hours each way. Usually I work only Saturdays and maybe Sundays after church, until 6 or 7 in the evening. Sometimes I get more hours, sometimes fewer. I don’t normally know until the night before whether I work that day at all. It’s feast or famine, I’ve realized, so I have to be careful with my money even when I have what looks like plenty to me. I’m used to barely getting by.

Along comes an epidemic of a sometimes deadly virus, and the world is quickly turning upside down. I was told that people are hoarding toilet paper and stores are rationing it, so I wonder what I’ll do when I run out of the package I have now. I have Kleenexes, but they can’t be thrown in a toilet, which means they will stink up my trash can and make for more garbage in the compacter. And when I run out of those, will I be able to get more?

Seeing headlines today that theaters are likely to be shut down tells me I’ll probably soon lose the shaky security I get from my job. I’m not helpless, though. As the saying goes, when God closes a door, He opens a window. Not that I believe God is the source of deadly diseases. No way! But I see a window of promise with bright light shining through for me… a window giving me time to develop a life I’ve always wanted—a life in which I make my living doing what I’m passionate about: writing!

When people ask me if I’ve been writing, I say, “You might as well ask me if I’ve been breathing!” Not that I spend as much time writing as I do breathing, but writing is nearly that important to me. When I was a little girl I knew I would be a writer. I was already making up novels in my head, word for word, during the hours I lay trying to get to sleep at night. I still remember some of the stories I planned to write. Some even already had titles. Miracle Under the Sea was about two girls who go scuba diving and get stuck in an underwater cave. Instead of drowning, somehow they turn into mermaids. A similar theme was a man who is snowed in in the valley where he lives and ends up getting out with a sleigh and delivering presents to all the children. I also thought up a story of a woman named Barbara who drives a jeep camper all over the U.S., visiting forests and finally settling in the one she likes best, in a snug log cabin, and she makes friends with the wild animals and has her own horse and her own dog; both run free on her land. This Barbara does what I planned to do. In my case, I would spend my time writing and become famous for my books.

My life hasn’t exactly fulfilled that dream, though at one point I lived in a cabin with woods behind it, and deer used to come nibble at the backyard garden or the front yard grass. And boy did I write there, with my big electric typewriter facing the bit of ocean I could see from the front window! I didn’t publish anything at the time, and I certainly didn’t get famous, but I was at peace, safe from a former fiance who had literally tried to choke the life out of me before I escaped him and was invited to hide out in a relative’s vacation home.

It used to be important that I be famous. I wanted all the kids who had teased me to read about me in the paper and be sorry they hated me. Now I don’t care what they think, and when I do publish my books they won’t know it’s me because I use a pseudonym. My destiny so far hasn’t allowed me to live in a forest, either. Circumstances have brought me near Portland, Oregon, where I now live in a suburb and don’t want to move out of my apartment ever, unless I get married, and there are no prospects for that.

My father always liked my writing but told me I would never make my living by it. “You’ll have to sell shoes or something, and write on the side.” So I spent my youth looking for a way to “sell shoes” that was substantial gainful employment. But I just don’t have much talent for things unrelated to writing. After a lot of upheavals that made me change colleges and majors, and after a lot of credits that didn’t count in the colleges I transferred to, I finally graduated with a bachelor’s in English and got some training and experience in editing. That made me eligible to apply for editing jobs, but the only one I ever got besides a few short freelance assignments was one for a publisher that gave me the experience of my dream, working in every phase of the editing process for novels, but paid so little I’m embarrassed to give the actual amounts. Good experience. Looks good on a resume. Helping other writers improve their work and publish their books is almost as satisfying to me as writing my own stories, poems, and songs. Everyone thinks my writing is great. I’ve even won contests, bringing in token payments. And one year I actually made hundreds of dollars from two short personal experience articles. The checks came to me in the same month, but there was no more money from writing that whole year—and none since.

People at my church have been writing books over the years, especially lately. Although I made it known I’m a professional editor, none of them has sought my services. I don’t know why. Some other people have contacted me saying they want me to edit their books, but every last one of them has backed out. I feel the old rejection from childhood hitting me hard. I know God values me, and that keeps me from despair. Finally, I asked a church member who recently published a book who her editor was, and she told me she found her from a certain website that helps freelancers connect with clients. I checked that website out and set up a profile. I still have to add testimonials from people I’ve edited for, and there are probably other things I should do to get people interested in my writing and editing, but I haven’t found the time.

The time… That’s what it’s going to be all about. Time to spend at home working on my current novel and memoir. Time to embellish my profile on that website, read how to best advertise my services there, and time to read and respond to proposals. Time to set up a new website, better than the disastrous one I've let go of. Time to establish myself as a paid writer and editor once and for all. To prove my father wrong. To prove I really am a writer, and a writer who can boost other writers’ successes. To realize the dream of my life. Thank You, Lord!

What just happened? The world is full of fear. I don't minimize the seriousness of the situation, but I’m holding on to hope. Hope that people who’d trusted that things would go on as always now realize they need help, and that they will turn to God for it. God can heal. God can protect. And God can raise the poor to a higher place. I think of Joseph in the Old Testament, who dreamed his destiny of rulership and lost everything to eventually realize that dream—not as a selfish domination of others but as the savior of the known world and a type of the One to come who would lay down His life to be the Savior of all who would follow Him. Like the Savior’s mother declared, God scatters the proud and exalts the lowly.
I’m tired of being trampled underfoot like a nobody. In this time of quarantine, I’m going for my dream. I will write and edit in my own home. I will do my work remotely. What just happened? I don't make light of the serious circumstances around me. But for me, it's a brand new day.

Take a gander at my website's blog, "The Writer's Layne." Here's a link: An Accomplishment Worth Celebrating--Much Thanks to NaNoWriMo

My website, WritingThatSings.com, introduces my editing services and includes lists and samples of my published writing. Please let me know if you want help with your own writing! You can use the form on the website or just email me at RobinLayne.Author@gmail.com. You are also welcome to comment here or on my website, or to email me if you have any reactions to my writings or want to talk shop.