Joining an Editing Community: Sometimes, It Takes a Village

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Scribophile, a NaNoWriMo 2016 sponsor, is one of the largest independent writing communities online. Today, author Rebel Farris shares how joining Scribophile helped her develop a professional-quality draft:

As a first-time novelist who hadn’t taken an English class in nearly 20 years, finishing NaNoWriMo 2016 with 108k words was quite an accomplishment. Cue the sweaty-palmed, heart-racing nervous breakdown, as I stared down the big E-word: edits. I had no idea where to even begin. I was in panic mode, for a multitude of reasons. The most obvious was that I was sure my grammar was atrocious—but also, I had no clue if the end result was a good story or not.

I knew it needed another set of eyes on it, but finding willing and educated eyes is easier said than done.

After completing NaNoWriMo, I decided to peruse the winner’s offerings and stumbled across Scribophile. My curiosity was piqued: a community of writers that critique each other’s work using a karma point system. Earn points by critiquing; spend points to post your work.

Skeptical, I decided to use the free membership to post my first chapter. Within an hour, I’d received three critiques on my work. It took me all of a day to decide the premium membership was worth it and quickly utilized my NaNo winner’s discount.

Not only was it incredibly encouraging, it was an educational experience. The critiques pointed out grammar mistakes. They also addressed confusing sentence structure and even offered constructive suggestions on how I could fix the errors I had made.

What I quickly learned was that the more I utilized critiquer’s advice and fixed errors before posting more chapters, the more in-depth their critiques became. They started reacting to my work, laughing at the jokes, getting frustrated when the characters made bad decisions, and even saving me from a dreaded continuity error.

“Their belief in me, and their love of my story and characters, gave me the courage to take the next step.”

Then the best part: I developed fans. I gained ten critiquing partners who chose to follow my work to the very end. I created a private group with these awesome helpful people and it has become our own community within the Scribophile community.

We critique each other’s work, offer helpful advice, and help work out the kinks in our stories that go beyond the initial critique. But the absolute best benefit by far was the encouragement I received. Their belief in me, and their love of my story and characters, gave me the courage to take the next step.

I started my journey on Scribophile by posting that first chapter on December 4th, and after posting 30 more chapters, my group and I completed edits on my first novel on January 15th. In that time I was also able to write another 30k words towards my second novel, which I plan to have finished by the end of January.

I now have a support system that can’t wait to get their hands on that next book, which makes it so much easier to meet my daily writing goals.

My book is currently in the hands of seven beta readers, who are pleased with the clean, professional-quality draft I was able to provide, allowing them to fully focus on the story, rather than errors and mistakes. I also have a professional editor lined up, a book cover design and photography shoot scheduled, and a tentative release date with a marketing firm. I don’t know if I would have taken that chance to believe in myself and invest in publishing my book had I not met the wonderful writers at Scribophile.

Rebel Farris writes New Adult Romantic Suspense and is the author of the upcoming Derby Girls series. A graduate of University of Houston, the former Roller Derby athlete lives in Austin, TX with her three kids and canine sidekick, Spike. She reads insatiably, collects Japanese stationery, and spends the rest of her free time outdoors, hiking and kayaking. Her debut novel, Falling Small, began life as a 2016 NaNo novel and will be published in late April 2017. Visit her website at rebelfarris.com; catch up with her on Facebook; or follow her on Twitter @Rebel_Farris.