Down On Your Writing Knees
I call it God, you may call it the universe, it doesn’t matter. But this higher power has a sense of humor. He watches and waits until your own actions strip down every last shred of your ego before he extends a hand, picks you up, dusts you off, and makes sure you aren’t harboring any grandiose dreams or illusions. Only then are you ready to face your writing career as it is: stark, unrelenting, but oddly beautiful in its truth.
By the time I decided to self publish, I knew I wasn’t going to be any bestseller. And, I was so embarrassed to be self-publishing, I didn’t intend to tell my friends I was doing it. Furthermore, if I wanted to do a decent job, it would also be expensive.
The one tattered hope I still clung to was this: I hoped that by some miracle, if even a single underprivileged young woman read my book, and my story inspired her to keep fighting for her dreams, she let me know it. Because you only change one person at a time. Therefore, if my writing effort helped even that one person, I had made a difference in this world. But, that dream aside, I was deeply grateful for a number of totally unexpected blessings:
—Psychologically, I was a calmer, less needy, more coherent mother to my kids after untangling my very repressed emotions, one painful layer at a time.
—I didn’t feel like a loser anymore because I had given my heart and soul to becoming a decent writer, even if no one else ever discovered the detail.
—And I had not given up on myself just because I had been close to fifty. I had tried.
That’s when God introduced me to Red Adept Publishing, an independent publishing house that also ran an editorial operation. I say it was God, because Red Adept doesn’t advertise. It’s sole owner, Lynn McNamee, called me back within two hours of emailing her. When I thanked her professionalism, she said, “It took me that long to get back to you?! I must be losing my grip.”
What I have neglected to mention here is that I had contacted another editorial house—also, coincidentally based in North Carolina, recommended by a good friend. The owner of that operation, despite her “super approachable, super user friendly,” website, didn’t get back to me at all. Therefore Lynn McNamee impressed me that much more.
In ludicrous comparison to my three former editors, who were solo chest-beaters, Lynn had a fleet of highly qualified and accredited editors who did regular content edits on all the books she published. If I wanted to use the Red Adept editing services, one of those same editors would edit my book for a tenth of the price I had spent on my lousy editors.
Lynn matched me to a young editor, Alyssa Hall. The process was super equitable: just as a few editors checked my writing skills and content, I, in turn checked their editing styles, and we all made our choices.
I have no words to explain my surprise or my gratitude when less than a month later, Alyssa sent me a detailed content edit of my manuscript, plus thirty-five, single spaced pages of exhaustive comments—but wait, that wasn’t all I got for this crazy reasonable price! I was also entitled to a one hour deconstruct conversation with Alyssa.
Being the insecure overdoer I was, I had signed up for a subsequent content edit after Alyssa, even though Lynn had assured me, I didn’t need it. “I showed Alyssa your writing sample and asked her if you could write. She said you wrote well.”
My anxiety, however, was a hundred percent real to me. In the unlikely case someone I knew bumbled into my self-published book, above all I didn’t want them ridicule me behind my back.
But, once I saw how clearcut, objective, and comprehensive Alyssa’s edit was, I instinctively grasped that Lynn had been right.
If I just calmed down and actually followed all of Alyssa’s critique and implemented her suggestions, I’d have a really good story, Lisa Cron style.
Through Alyssa’s painstaking comments alone, I realized how I had missed understanding the subtler nuances of Cron’s teachings.
And well before my one hour consult with her, I read Alyssa’s thirty-five-page analysis twelve times in a row, until I got over being overwhelmed and truly digested it. Then I listed all the changes she had suggested, which added up to 35.
Alyssa’s utterly serious and dispassionate analysis of my story, where to her, the characters were simply pawns to move around to best effect, without the impediment of my emotional attachment to them, finally freed me too.
At last I left behind “my” story, and for the first time, focused on crafting a “good” story. A story hopping with intent, outrage, pathos, love, hate, deceit, betrayal jealousy, loyalty, and tenderness, where clear plot points led to clearer plot consequences.
When we spoke, I told Alyssa I knew I’d have a good story by the time I finished implementing her edits.
She asked me why I felt so certain.
I said, “Because a mountain is spherical. You can climb it from any given point, but u have to stay on a vertical course to reach the top. And your edits are a very clear way up the mountain. But they are one way up. If I get too many editing opinions, I’ll be running from side to side instead of climbing upwards.”
I heard the smile in Alyssa’s voice when she said, “That’s a new one. I’ve never heard that one before.”
After Alyssa’s content edit, I still had to find the money to pay Red Adept for a Line Edit, and a Proofread, but my wretched Indian pride wouldn’t let me self-publish anything less. And all of it was scaring me silly—the money aspect, the “letting go” angle, but this was my first solo rollercoaster ride, and I wasn’t going to back down from it. If I failed (as in my book flopped), yes, I would indeed be sad, but I would be able to live with myself. What mattered was how hard I had tried.
Have you ever fulfilled one of your dreams? It’s never to late to try.
:))
