Let me take you through my answer:

MFA: Missing Factual Applications

There are a lot of great things about MFA programs: time and space to write, the opportunity to make connections with writers, and let’s not forget actual writing. However, one of the ways MFA programs fall short is they sometimes stand for Missing Factual Applications.

Were it not for my internship, (read: me legit convincing my professor they needed to let me work for them so I could absorb their real-world knowledge like a sponge) I wouldn’t know anything about the editing process, querying, publishing, and everything in between. MFA programs are so committed to writing, they forget there’s another type of education their writers need (read: the deets on the DIRE situation that is publishing).

Let me level with you, MFAs aren’t perfect

My MFA program didn’t teach us !@#$ about how to query agencies, or our manuscripts, ways to leverage our education in pursuit of jobs outside adjunct teaching, and the amount of education we received regarding publishing was straight up laughable. 

So, my first piece of advice to this person was: Do not blame yourself for what you don’t know. MFA programs need to find ways to do right by their students by providing transparent and current resources which will help them achieve their goals. 

I found the reason my MFA program didn’t provide any insight into the editing process or the publication process was because they were so grossly out of touch. Despite the fact that one of our faculty members was published several times over, they never taught us a thing about querying. Another faculty member’s book was optioned for a TV series, and yet we never got a lesson in film and media rights. 

What you don’t know isn’t your own fault but, unfortunately, it becomes your responsibility to learn…which is easier said than done.

Answering the Question

The answer to this person’s query is dependent on several factors: what stage of the writing process you’re in and how you’re being published.

The Writing Process

Drafting: If you’re still drafting (meaning you are not yet ready to query publishers), I advise reaching out to anyone and everyone who is willing to read your work. Getting opinions and feedback from those whose life experience, and genre, is different from your own is supremely helpful and valuable.

Getting Ready to Query: Once you are confident your draft is ready to be sent to publishers, I recommend working with an editor who 1) understands your vision for the book, and 2) is familiar with your voice, for tightening, line edits, narrative plot holes, and reviews of your query letter. 

If you find you’re getting consistent rejections, take note of what the rejections are saying (assuming they’ve provided feedback) and re-work your draft.

Post Contract Signing: This part of the editing process really depends on the publisher. Depending on your publisher’s budget, you may or may not be assigned an editor to work with you until final proof. With my publisher specifically, there was an expectation the draft I presented was as close to the final draft as possible. I went to page proofs relatively quickly.

Page Proofs: Page proofs refer to the proof of the manuscript the publisher intends to send to print. When I received the page proofs, I did a one over myself, then I worked overtime in order to pay for an independent editor to also do a once over for spelling, syntax, and narrative errors. There was an expectation that edits made during this phase would not be large scale plot edits.

To be completely transparent, I was published by an independent publisher, and assume a lot of the expectations around proofing and editing are dependent upon your publisher. However, I think the above is a good baseline for what you can expect with the editing process.

What other questions do you have about the editing process, writing a novel, or getting published? Drop them here and Lauren might answer them in a future column!

Lauren J. Sharkey is a writer, teacher, and transracial adoptee. Inconvenient Daughter is her debut novel and loosely based on her experience as a Korean adoptee. You can follow her at ljsharks.com, and on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

The post What MFAs Miss about the Editing Process appeared first on DIY MFA.

When I began revising my latest novel in April, the mindset I had honed through the KonMari method improved my decision-making, and ultimately, my writing. While I can’t guarantee you’ll have the same results if you skip tidying up your house, here are five Marie Kondo practices that can be applied to revision.

1) Work in categories, not rooms

Up until this point, I have been a serial tidier, avowing each spring to organize the house once and for all. I would move room-by-room until the decisions of what to toss and what to keep, where to put things, and where to donate things, got so fatiguing that I quit, never really finishing. Kondo advocates organizing by category rather than room, starting with clothes. By limiting my focus to clothes, I didn’t have to figure out again what to do each time I stumbled upon more in another closet or the basement, because I’d organized them all in one go.

Similar to the room method, most writers assume that they will start with the first chapter and revise one at a time, but within each chapter, there are multiple categories–narration, character, story, scenes, and details that need polishing. If a writer goes chapter by chapter on all of these elements, then decides eight chapters in to cut a character, she or he has to return the beginning and start all over again!

This is exactly the problem Gabriela addressed during her Rock Your Revisions session at the Writer’s Digest Conference in New York this August. Gabi advocated for layered revision: when a writer handles certain types of revisions before others, thus avoiding the pitfalls of serial tinkerers, who are never done revising.

2) Ask yourself, “Does this spark joy?”

Once I gathered my clothes, I held each item, and asked myself, “Does this spark joy?” Kondo claims it’s the physical touch that allows you to decide quickly. To apply this concept to revision, a writer must have a clear definition for joy in this context.

The joy of a particular work is its core. To find your book’s core, consider Cheryl Klein’s questions from her incredible book, The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults: “What powers this book for you? What within the story gets you to your computer each morning? What is the most important thing you want your novel to convey or to accomplish? What is the thing you will not give up in it, no matter who tells you to do so?”

Klein says that the answer can be at most two things. So once I had my core, I could work through each layer and ask, “Does this point-of-view/character/story/scene/detail serve this novel’s core?”

3) Thank before you discard

No doubt, in decluttering and revision, there were times when the loss of objects or words made me nervous, and I wanted to hoard. Kondo writes, “…when we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.” This advice came in handy as I processed boxes of nostalgia–cards, certificates, and photographs that hadn’t seen daylight in years. While these items may have sparked joy at one point, they had served their purposes. I thanked them for what they meant at that moment in the past then let them go.

In writing, these words are our darlings. They were fun to write at the time, representing an attachment to the past, but as the story has solidified, they now distract from the core. I thanked my darlings helping me get to the better story, then deleted them.

4) Start with what remains

Kondo’s second reason for hanging on to joyless things is fear of the future. I might need my back-up back-up raincoat! My word count is supposed to be going up, not down!

To combat this anxiety known by tidiers and writers around the world, I took a hard look at what I had after discarding and deleting: the style, the aesthetic that will bring me daily joy. Of course in writing, what I had left was not enough for a publishable novel. Rather than adding another scene, I tried to go without by embellishing what I already had, ensuring that the current scenes are fully developed to feature the story’s core. If, after an honest try, doing without was impossible, then I wrote a new scene that served the story’s core.

5) Display what brings you joy

According to Kondo, assigning a place for everything and faithfully returning objects to their places is how to break the serial tidying cycle. This is a matter of self-discipline. At several points in the revision process, I was tempted to tinker with details when I wasn’t sure the scene was necessary, to keep a darling that was so very funny to me, to see my shrinking word count as a sign that I was farther from my goal rather than closer. It took self-discipline to trust that by making space for my story, it would be complete. That all my joyful work was visible, because I’d deleted everything else.

Marie Kondo cross-pollinated with my writing life for huge yields. What practices or books have unexpectedly transplanted themselves into your writing?

Jennifer Brinkmeyer writes contemporary fantasy and horror. When she’s not teaching teenagers how to rebel through literacy, she’s probably blowing bubbles with her daughter. To talk shop, check out her website or follow her on Twitter.

The post #5onFri: Five Marie Kondo Practices For Your Revisions appeared first on DIY MFA.

Putting a book aside after working on it forever can be painful, but it can also be fruitful. We learn from writing, but sometimes it takes starting a new project to really internalize those lessons. Some manuscripts might need to be written for only that purpose. However, with time and distance, you might also consider revising a trunk novel. Here are five tips to help with that process.

1) Give Yourself Plenty of Time and Space (And Perhaps a Few Other Writing Projects First)

One of the best things a writer can do for his or her writing is to step away from it, and work on something new—at least for a while. There is such a thing as revising a novel to death. It’s easy to lose the initial spark through over-working a story. But time and emotional distance allow us to look at it with clearer eyes, and less attachment. To see the darlings that need to be killed, the places where the pacing slows, or why no one could understand certain elements of the world-building. At the same time, by working on an entirely new project, you can put into practice the lessons you learned from your trunk novel, and fall in love with a new story, cast and world.

Of course, it is also a possibility that with time and distance you might end up deciding that a certain story isn’t the one you want to tell anymore. Some trunk novels do stay in the trunk forever. And that’s okay, too. There are always more stories to tell!

2) Ask Why This Project? And Why Now?

Let’s face it: something about this project didn’t work before. Whether it was that you were too close to it, or it got bogged down in a subplot that never gelled, or there was a character readers couldn’t connect with. Perhaps the market wasn’t right at the time. This problem isn’t always insurmountable, but it is something to take into account. If you’re thinking about revising a trunk novel, it’s worth asking “Why?” first.

My suggestion? Make a few lists. First, write down everything you adored about this book last time you ventured into it. Second, write down everything other readers adored about it. Are the two similar? Where do they diverge? That’s worth taking into account. Third, write down everything you thought didn’t work about this book. Name the characters, the scenes, the points of confusion that you yourself or your readers saw. Now, lastly, write down how you plan to fix them. Every single one.

Doing this beforehand is an extra step, and of course, this needs to be tailored to your own particular method. But it can help clarify the decision to dive back into a project that didn’t work previously. It’s good to go in with open eyes and a clear plan.

3) Consider a New Structure or Perspective

Recently, I’ve started revising a novel I put aside for five years. One of the issues I had was that as much as I loved my main character, he was a pretty angsty dude. It was hard to be in his head constantly. While some writers can absolutely nail that, something about my rendition wasn’t working. When I recently started revising it, I decided to give the reader a break by adding some other perspectives. It’s amazing how much of a difference it made. Readers who said they got annoyed with him now said he was their favorite character. This made me happy because he’d always been mine. But by looking not just at the story itself, but the way I was telling it, I was able to rectify a reader experience. The story was richer for it.

This is a great time to get creative and experiment, especially since the bones of the story–the characters, world, and plot–already exist. Consider writing from a different point of view, or shaking up the plot. You never know what you’ll come up with!

4) Begin in a New Document

This bounces off of tip #3. In order to look at a manuscript as entirely new, rather than just a revision, consider starting in an entirely new document. This will put you in the headspace of creation, rather than revision, even if in some cases you’ll end up typing or copy+pasting.

If this is a novel you’ve put aside for years, it’s almost better to think of it as an entirely new book, rather than simply a revision. And that gives you the space to get creative!

5) Take Stock

One of the best parts about revising a trunk novel is that you can see how much you’ve grown as a writer. The process is solitary, and it can sometimes feel like we’re not getting anywhere. Each story we write is a growing and learning experience, but there aren’t that many ways to measure this. A trunk novel is a perfect opportunity to take stock.

Take the time, as you’re working on this new version of an old story, to think about how you’ve changed as a writer. Are there certain aspects of the process that are easier? Are there things you know now to avoid? Celebrate the success that you’ve already achieved as you keep working toward more!

The post #5OnFri: Five Tips for Revising Your Trunk Novel appeared first on DIY MFA.

Woah! Slow down there, turbo. First of all, congratulations on reaching the editing stage! That’s a step that most budding authors don’t get to. But you’re looking at this the wrong way. I know, kid. I’ve been there. [Cue wizened wisewoman staring wisely off into the distance.]

Here’s a quote from Michael Chrichton, author of Jurassic Park:

“Books aren’t written – they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.”

Did you hear that? Seven rewrites. I don’t exactly prescribe to that strict a code of rewriting. I consider myself accomplished if I make it through two drafts (my max so far is four). Rewriting is hard. Really hard.

But you can do it. When you’re ready to start rewrites, here’s your mission, should you choose to accept it, in seven easy steps.

1. Get your head on straight.

This is going to be a long, rough process, but instead of toughening up your skin, train yourself in Air Bending. Be like the leaf! Flow with the movement of the gates! In layman’s terms, be flexible enough to realize that your work is not carved in stone. Your manuscript ain’t no Ten Commandments. Your characters, your plot, and—most importantly—you are flexible.

2. Make a list

As I’m drafting, I like to write down everything that changes halfway through. MC’s name is now Sparklepuff instead of Glitterfabulousness? Bad guy turns out to be brainwashed best friend named the Winter Soldier? Cool. Now go through your list and revisit your manuscript, one item at a time. Adjust every plot point that the item on the list pulls. Cross them off when you’re done.

3. Sit down and read the b****.

Read through from the beginning. Don’t stop to make edits. Instead, try to look at it with new eyes. How will your readers perceive your story? Here are some of the main issues I see a lot while I’m critiquing a fellow writer’s work:

• Does the story start off too slowly? You might have to chop off the head of the beast, Ned-Stark-style, by a couple of chapters in order to grab readers’ attention from page one.
• Is there a major issue with your main character’s motivations? If you’ve got a lazy, reluctant fellow who is respectable and never likes to go on adventures, you may have to throw in a pack of dwarves to force him on his plot instead of letting him sit around eating fish and chips.
• Does your character get out of trouble on her good looks alone? Try making things a little harder for her. Force her to think her way out of it to ramp up the tension and make your character more believable.
• Still stuck? Read this book

4. Blackmail some beta readers.

I’ve said it before  and I’ll say it again: You’re too close to your work to pick out all its flaws. Readers haven’t been writing about the trials and tribulations of certain island where it’s easy to get LOST for six seasons like you have. Therefore, they’ll be able to pick out main flaws in your plot (John Locke was dead all along?!) that you wouldn’t otherwise see.

5. Kill your darlings.

I’m sure you’ve probably got a few flowery paragraphs in there that add nothing to your story, or a character who pops up only to say something witty once in a while. Remember how you’ve decided to flow with the movement of the story? Relax. Allow yourself, once again, to remember that your novel is malleable. Think of it as a chance to write the story again: Now, more streamlined than ever. Cut out the infections. Do whatever’s necessary not to let it die before it ever gets going.

6. Line-edit and proof-read

Yes, you have to go through all of these steps before you can even start to quibble over whether “amorphous” or “ambiguous” is the right word. This is your last chance to read the beast once again, this time paying more close attention to those details that are really going to make your manuscript shine.

7. Rinse and repeat

Sorry, did you think you were done? Oh, you naive little writer you. You’re going to go through several iterations of this process before you’re ready. It might take a month. It might take years.

If you feel overwhelmed by the editing process, consider finding an editor who knows what to look for in a good story and can help you professionally rework your manuscript until it’s gleaming.

But remember that you do have to kick this manuscript out of the nest and let it flap its wings on agents’ and publishers’ desks eventually. You’re never going to feel fully ready to do it—but when you’ve done the best that you can do, it’s time.

Got a question? Tweet me @beccaquibbles with the hashtag #askbecca, email me at becca [at] DIYMFA [dot] com, or just leave a comment below! You could see your question answered right here at Ask Becca!

Rebecca Ann Jordan is a speculative fiction author and artist in San Diego. She recently won Reader’s Choice Best of 2013 for her short story “Promised Land” at Fiction Vortex and has published poetry and fiction in Flapperhouse, Yemassee Magazine, Bravura Literary Journal and more. Becca regularly columns for DIYMFA.com. See more from her at rebeccaannjordan.com.

The post Ask Becca: Seven Steps to Editing Like a Master appeared first on DIY MFA.

Now what?

You could start querying publishers or agents. You could skip the query phase and go straight on to self-publishing. Or you could hire a freelance editor. Why? You’ve worked so hard and for so long. Surely someone will see the potential in your masterpiece. What do you need to hire an editor for?

You’re Not Objective

As a freelance editor and former intern for both an agent and a publishing company, let me tell you something that I hope you already know. You’ve got to put your best, most polished draft out there in order to get picked out of the slush pile. How can you be sure you’re putting your best work forward if you haven’t shown it to anyone yet?

Maybe you’ve shown your manuscript (your shape-shifting demon romance novel, your non-fiction treatise on the mating habits of freshwater clams) to your boyfriend, or best friend, or to your sister who reads a lot. Maybe they loved it! That’s great. Showing your work to people you care about is a great first step. But you need to have someone who’s not invested in you emotionally, and who knows a thing or two about structure and style, look at your manuscript before you decide it’s ready for the unforgiving public.

Many authors seek out critique partners, other writers who are also in the throes of manuscript creation, to get some more focused and objective feedback. These crit groups are awesome for honing drafts zero through eight of your masterpiece. You get solid feedback and you get a chance to give it as well. So now your manuscript is perfect, right?

Even your fabulous critique partners are too close to be entirely objective. After all, they’ve read the manuscript a thousand times and seen it go through so many changes. Spotting any remaining issues requires a professional set of fresh eyes and perspective.

The Publishing Industry is Glutted

Trust me. I’ve seen the slush pile. It was because of my experience with the slush pile that I decided to become a freelance editor. As an intern, I sent more than a few of those rejection e-mails myself.  Egregious spelling errors, grammar-confused sentences, lack of organization, an unintentionally compressed timeline, plot holes a mile wide… More often than not, I thought that if only this author had shown their manuscript to someone—to anyone—I wouldn’t be here sending this e-mail, dying a little inside at the thought of crushing a fellow author’s dreams of being published. Whenever allowed, I made sure to add in that little bit of feedback.

A Freelance Editor Can Help

A freelance editor can give you insights into your writing that you may not have realized you needed. You’ve been working on this manuscript for too long. You’re too close to it to see where it still needs work.

Professional editing is about more than making sure that all your i’s are dotted and all your t’s are crossed. In the next post we’ll go into more detail about the different types of work a freelance editor can do for you based on your manuscript’s needs.

We freelance editors have only one vested interest: our clients. We’re not looking to break the next 50 Shades of Grey or Harry Potter. We’re not considering the percentage of royalties we get from a book on The New York Times Best Seller list. We’re in this business because we love reading. We want you, the author, to find your best, most authentic voice and share it with the world.

There are a glut (a superfluity, an excess, a plethora) of narratives out there today vying for the attention of the masses. Hiring a freelance editor can give yours an extra boost.

………………………………………..

Elisabeth Kauffman is a freelance editor in California. Her favorite genres are YA fantasy, sci-fi, and romance. She regularly obsesses over board games, Doctor Who, and Harry Potter. Come share your ideas with her on Facebook and Twitter–@WritingRefinery–and on the web at www.writingrefinery.com

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