Five things I Learned about Writing in 2014
I wanted to share this blog post from Kamy Wicoff
1) Revision! Revision! (Sing to the tune of "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof.) In December of 2013, my dear friend and editor of many years Amy Fox gave me notes on a manuscript I thought only needed polishing. As it turns out, it needed to be cut by 25,000 words. I cried, I denied, and then, over the first two months of 2014, I got it done. The lesson? Revision is not something you do when you are done writing. It IS writing, at its core.
2) Copyeditors are King. (If they are any good.) I have a confession to make. Until this spring, I didn't really understand the difference between an editor and a copyeditor. Now I do. Karen Sherman, who is the most thorough, smart, writerly-dignity-saving copyeditor ever (I shudder to think what she'd do to this sentence), showed me exactly what copyeditors do at their best. In a nutshell, they save authors from looking like morons. In a full-length novel, it is so easy to miss the one place you forgot to excise mention of a character who didn't make the final cut, or say Monday when you meant Wednesday, or underestimate the time it would take for somebody to get from one part of Manhattan to another when traveling by cab. Karen saved me from errors like these and many more, bringing a careful eye, grammatical rigor, and good old common sense to bear upon every sentence in my book. (In a book about time travel, like mine, this was particularly indispensable.) The lesson? Every author needs a copyeditor, but make sure you get a good one. SWP has a stall of excellent copyeditors, including the aforementioned Karen Sherman.
3) Writing may seem like a solo job, but it takes a village. Because 2014 was, for me, a year focused on finishing a book rather than starting a new one, the number of people--all with distinct expertise and unique perspectives--I needed to get it done was made especially evident to me this year. If you think you can write a book without help, just read (or write) an acknowledgements section. I wrote mine earlier this year, and it was humbling, but also moving, to chronicle just how many talented and generous people I relied on in the process of writing it.
4) What goes around comes around. When it comes blurb-time, the best possible thing you could have done to prepare is to have been generous with other writers yourself. It is much easier to ask someone to read your manuscript (which, make no mistake, is a LOT to ask of anybody) when you've read something of that writer's in the past, or written a review, or even a fan letter. Not when you needed something from that writer, but when that writer needed you.
5) Writers are like sharks. If they stop writing, they die. Or at least they get really crabby. As I complained in my last post, which I realize was on the whiny side, I am in promotion mode, and when you are promotion mode, it is very hard to find the time you need to write. But find it I must. I am not someone who writes every day, but I am someone who writes most days, and when I'm not writing, I am thinking about it. Not having a quiet, creative world I can dip into when this world gets too chaotic, or too stressful, or just too loud, makes me brittle and restless. It's time to start the next book.
1) Revision! Revision! (Sing to the tune of "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof.) In December of 2013, my dear friend and editor of many years Amy Fox gave me notes on a manuscript I thought only needed polishing. As it turns out, it needed to be cut by 25,000 words. I cried, I denied, and then, over the first two months of 2014, I got it done. The lesson? Revision is not something you do when you are done writing. It IS writing, at its core.
2) Copyeditors are King. (If they are any good.) I have a confession to make. Until this spring, I didn't really understand the difference between an editor and a copyeditor. Now I do. Karen Sherman, who is the most thorough, smart, writerly-dignity-saving copyeditor ever (I shudder to think what she'd do to this sentence), showed me exactly what copyeditors do at their best. In a nutshell, they save authors from looking like morons. In a full-length novel, it is so easy to miss the one place you forgot to excise mention of a character who didn't make the final cut, or say Monday when you meant Wednesday, or underestimate the time it would take for somebody to get from one part of Manhattan to another when traveling by cab. Karen saved me from errors like these and many more, bringing a careful eye, grammatical rigor, and good old common sense to bear upon every sentence in my book. (In a book about time travel, like mine, this was particularly indispensable.) The lesson? Every author needs a copyeditor, but make sure you get a good one. SWP has a stall of excellent copyeditors, including the aforementioned Karen Sherman.
3) Writing may seem like a solo job, but it takes a village. Because 2014 was, for me, a year focused on finishing a book rather than starting a new one, the number of people--all with distinct expertise and unique perspectives--I needed to get it done was made especially evident to me this year. If you think you can write a book without help, just read (or write) an acknowledgements section. I wrote mine earlier this year, and it was humbling, but also moving, to chronicle just how many talented and generous people I relied on in the process of writing it.
4) What goes around comes around. When it comes blurb-time, the best possible thing you could have done to prepare is to have been generous with other writers yourself. It is much easier to ask someone to read your manuscript (which, make no mistake, is a LOT to ask of anybody) when you've read something of that writer's in the past, or written a review, or even a fan letter. Not when you needed something from that writer, but when that writer needed you.
5) Writers are like sharks. If they stop writing, they die. Or at least they get really crabby. As I complained in my last post, which I realize was on the whiny side, I am in promotion mode, and when you are promotion mode, it is very hard to find the time you need to write. But find it I must. I am not someone who writes every day, but I am someone who writes most days, and when I'm not writing, I am thinking about it. Not having a quiet, creative world I can dip into when this world gets too chaotic, or too stressful, or just too loud, makes me brittle and restless. It's time to start the next book.
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