Newsletter
WHAT’S BEEN GOING ON
The first half of the year has been great. I’ve had the opportunity to work on a number of your manuscripts, including a couple of memoirs, some contemporary women’s fiction, and a historical fantasy weaving magic into the world of the wild west. I hope to be able to share publishing news about these books, but they haven’t hit the presses yet. I’ll keep you posted.
One project I worked on that has been published is my partner, Monna McDiarmid’s second novel, After Everything. To be clear, I don’t think this is a common arrangement. I think the thing that most writers need from their life partners with regards to their writing is 1) space and time to work, and 2) encouragement, ranging from enthusiastic appreciation to unadulterated adoration of every written word. Writing is solitary and vulnerable and if the person who loves you the most shows up with anything resembling a pointy opinion, that can easily push a writer over the precipice.
But we’ve made it work. To begin with, we both love good stories, and over the years we have talked a lot about the books we’re reading and the movies and TV we’re watching. About the moments that deeply resonate and why we think they are so powerful. About the moments we wanted to love more and what we think it was that left us wanting. About work we thought took responsibility for what it was putting into the world and work that didn’t. We have been students of story, and of how we each think about story.
I studied creative writing in the MFA program at the University of British Columbia, in Canada. It was the best educational experience of my life, but it wasn’t all helpful. My instructors were excellent, as were most of my student colleagues, but there were pointy criticisms, and people who could not help but make my story into their own. There were people who felt they had an authoritative grip on what good writing was, and the confidence to tell me where I was coming up short. But I learned a lot in those workshops, about the craft of writing, but also about who to listen to and what kind of feedback moves things forward in a helpful way.
Monna took a different route. Sitting for the criticisms of a roomful of emerging writers and having all those voices up in her head would not have been a good way for her to become a better writer. She sought out other writing teachers. Sarah Seleky’s Story is a State of Mind program, and the courses of Caroline Donahue and Rachael Herron. Poetry workshops online and in person. Reading books about craft. And writing a lot. Monna wrote regularly in a blog, and then later, in a newsletter for her website, and began teaching courses in poetry and reflective living, in no small part, to keep herself writing. There are so many ways to be a writer.
When Monna was working on After Everything, I was apprehensive about being one of her editors. After receiving the editorial letter from one of the edits on her previous novel, The 38 Impossible Loves of Naoko Nishizawa, she’d had to put the letter and novel away for a while and not think about either of them. If, after receiving my notes, she needed to put me in a drawer for a while, I didn’t think that would be very good for our relationship. But we talked about it, and about what was at stake. After all those years of talking about story together, I knew she was asking me to edit her work because she trusted my understanding of story and thought I could help her make the work better. I also knew that publishing her first novel and thinking about writing as a profession had shifted what was at stake for Monna. She knew that I believe that she is a great writer, but that the work was about making a great book, and being able to separate those ideas makes a lot of space for the collaborative work of editing.
Being one of Monna’s editors has helped me define how I want to work with all of my clients. I’m not interested in being a critic. We didn’t talk much about if the story was “good”. I asked her a lot of questions. We talked about what it was doing and what it was meaning and whether that was what she wanted it to do and mean. If it wasn’t quite doing what she wanted it to do, we tried to understand why, and brainstormed possibilities of things that could change that would make it do what she wanted. Where she was open to friendly possibilities, I was able to suggest things she hadn’t intended, but that reinforced or deepened the things she did want, and she was able to take some of those ideas and let go of others and tell me when new ideas were no longer welcome.
I don’t have to like a piece of writing to be supportive of its writer or help it become the thing it’s trying to be. But it’s so lovely when I do. Especially when the writer is my partner. After Everything is a great book, full of sass and heart and keen observation and philosophical supposition. I’m really proud to have been able to help this book into the world, and really proud of Monna for writing it. If you are interested in reading it, you can find it online on Amazon, or at Chapters/Indigo (Canada) or Barnes and Noble (USA) or Waterstones (UK).
Back in Nova Scotia
UPDATES
Early in the year, I was invited to talk about editing on Rachael Herron’s podcast, Ink in your Veins. We talked about what kind of editing is really necessary, and I shared an idea about what we’re really doing when we structure a story. You can check it out HERE.
We have moved from Japan, back to Canada. I am now operating out of the Atlantic time-zone, which should make it easier to schedule coaching calls with those of you who are writing projects in North America. I am, of course, still happy to do the temporal gymnastics that might be necessary to meet with any of you who are in Asia or other time-zones I am no longer close to.
I will be raising the prices of my Copy Edits, starting in October 2024. As I have been editing, I have found that copy edits are taking as much time as developmental edits to do, and I need to value that time appropriately. On October 1st, copy edits will go up to $150/10,000 words. Prices are still in Canadian dollars.
YOU
So what are you working on? I’d love to hear about it.
If there’s a way that I can support your writing project with an edit or an hour of coaching, please let me know. I would love to help make your project the book you want it to be.