You Wish Life Had Guarantees—But It Doesn’t, Does it?

To get results you have to take chances. You have to believe and you have to try. And then you just might succeed. 

My partner’s sister, the high-tech saleswoman, said that in sales they had a rule: To make one sale, you had to pitch to 10 customers. By that token—so far, my 1500$ on the strategist hadn’t been a loss if I had received four replies to twelve queries. 

Notwithstanding, thoroughly uncomfortable about having splurged 1500$, plus an additional 200$ more on the strategist, I sent my manuscript off to Red Adept for the mysterious line edit, whatever that was. But insecure over-doer that I was, I asked Lynn McNamee, the owner of Red Adept, for this line editor’s credentials. Lynn replied, “I don’t remember anything other than that she was a bartender for a while. I don’t judge my workers by their credentials. To work for me, they have to pass a pretty stiff exam. If they pass it, they’re good to go.” And with that I had to be content. 

Hey, worse come to worse, I didn’t have to take what the line editor did. That’s why I was self-bloody-publishing. It meant I didn’t have to kowtow to anybody. 

The line editor, Amanda Kruse, got back to me within 25 days. Without anyone asking, she wrote me the most emotional and heartfelt endorsement I had ever received about my story. My next task was to review her line edit, change by itty-bitty change, and there were lots and lots of changes. 

I told her I hated reviewing anything on “track changes” because all the different colors and texts and suggestions not only overwhelmed me, they also confused me. Finally I said I’d simply read the manuscript “clean,” with all her changes hidden. If I liked it, we were in business. If I found stuff I didn’t like, I’d copy-paste the paragraph with comments below. She replied she had never worked that way, but was willing to try. 

Now, somewhere in an earlier blog I said that one of my greatest strengths was to know when to cede to experts. I only had to read three paragraphs of the line edited manuscript to realize that this edit was outstanding. It was so outstanding, I could tell there was some change, but it was so subtle, I couldn’t tell what it was, since I couldn’t “see” the change. Somehow, Amanda Kruse had managed to keep my vocabulary and my voice, yet the message was now louder. Clearer. Stronger. 

Believe it or not, at that juncture my first thought was, shit. With this much room for improvement, there’s no way I would ever win anything in that Royal Dragonfly Award contest. Oh well. I had to look at the big picture and be grateful my book was becoming so much better. And right up to the end, I only confirmed over and over how the line edit had enhanced my prose and my story. 

Now I was more curious than ever to discover Amanda Kruse’s credentials. So much so, it was the first question I asked during the complimentary phone call she owed me. Just as I had suspected—Amanda, at 32, had the formidable command of English and grammar she had, not just because she had a B.A. in Creative Writing, and an M.A. in Publishing—she had received her pursuit of excellence from a young, impoverished mother, determined to educate her children. So determined in fact, that she had somehow studied Montessori education, and not content with that, she had opened a Montessori school. Therefore, Amanda’s romance with the English language had begun in kindergarten. 

The bartending had been an interim job while she was establishing her freelance business as an editor and a ghost writer. 

Will it surprise you, dear reader, to hear that I did win something in the Royal Dragonfly Award contest? :))  It wasn’t the Grand Prize. It wasn’t even the First or Second Prize. It was only an honorable mention. But here’s the detail: each category had multiple first, second prizes and honorable mentions. In my unpublished manuscript category, however, no one had won anything. This was a worldwide contest, and in it the one single honorable mention was my book, Dragonfly Escaping. 

My therapist, Peg, said—what this tells me is how close you are to the finish line. So don’t underestimate the power of your story. 

Did this mean that hiring that very expensive strategist had been a good investment? I didn’t know. But I knew for sure that without her, I would never have discovered the Story Monsters Inc. platform with my online skills. In life you had to roll the dice if you wanted to win. And sometimes the wins were small…but every mountain climb began with that first small step.