Journey Through My Profession: Creativity by Me for Me
Most of my business-related time this calendar year was spent on copyediting and proofreading work. Still, part of a year-end review isn’t just the high-level business and employee evaluations that have to be done. A bigger part of it for me is being willing to journey into the depths of my skill set. This means analyzing what I learned, and which lessons I applied and when in my creative journey.
Since last week, I’ve added a chapter my novel-in-progress. Naturally, I’m at the point where I want to knock these two fools’ heads together and scream, “Just kiss already!”
Still, part of my creative journey is knowing when to coach myself, when to edit, and when to leave well enough alone and just write. As Moriah Richard states, “Instead of shooting for perfection as you’re drafting, it’s best to keep yourself focused on making sure that all the time you’re spending revising isn’t keeping you from actually writing.”
Photo by Alice Hampson on Unsplash
My 2024 Editor–Author Journey
I’ve been an author since long before I ever considered a career path in the book editing field. Reading wasn’t just a hobby, and it wasn’t just a special interest. It was literally a hyperfixation. I lost myself in story after story, world after world, time period after time period. Doing so taught me to instinctively recognize what a good story looks and sounds like.
My practical experience doesn’t just come in the form of paid work. I’ve lost count of how many times throughout the year that I pause between the words in a book. I appreciate on a soul-deep level just how well an author uses a specific storytelling principle. Solid story structure, character development, and plot pacing yank me into worlds that feel as real as the one in which I currently exist. The pacing of completely opposite genres prove that tension and humor infuse relationships of all kinds.
Gregg Hurwitz’s action thriller Orphan X series keeps me just as enthralled as Aimee Nicole Walker’s queer romance Redemption Ridge series. Both break my heart just as easily as did Adam Silvera’s bittersweet young adult queer romance Death-Cast series.
Michael Woodson makes the following point:
Growing as a writer also means growing in how we approach revision. Being proud of what you’ve accomplished and knowing it needs some massaging can exist at the same time.
Being Honest with Myself
The journey to build out and not just start but continue drafting my WIP only reinforces those instinctual lessons. I read through craft books at the rate I do not just so I can help other authors. It’s so when the time comes to rip my own manuscript apart, I can be sure I’m (mostly) doing it from an objective headspace. After all, the essence of a good professional edit is twofold:
- Hold up a mirror that reflects what’s actually on the page versus what I think is there. It’s why I do my first round of a developmental edit on a hardcopy manuscript. Highlighters, colored erasable pens, and sticky notes galore keep my neurospicy brain somewhat organized.
- Find suggestions based on expert advice from the likes of Donald Maas, Larry Brooks, and Tiffany Yates Martin. Yates Martin in particular advises that recommendations “pinpoint what may not be working as well as it could—and specifically why.”
I write part-time, in between those editing projects I talked about last week. Still, that doesn’t mean I put any less effort into telling the best stories possible than I put into guiding my authors through their own writing journey.
My 2024 Coaching Journey
I’m a teacher at heart. Better yet, I’m truly passionate about storytelling. It comes through in how I guide my clients along their own creative journeys. Collaboration lies at the center of coaching, even more than developmental editing. Indeed, Writing Mastery Academy recommends considering a book coach “with a background or experience as a writer or editor, not just a coach, so they’re familiar with how to write a book and can provide valuable insight.”
Thus, despite only having one writing and one revision coaching client this year, I learned a ton about what book coaching is and especially what it isn’t. Bettering my skill set in this department wasn’t just about being prepared for my client. I applied those same lessons to my own author journey.
Jane Friedman, publishing extraordinaire, says,
Writing is revising. Good writing advice can help you avoid the serious pitfalls, or bring clarity to a confusing process, but creative work of any kind is going to involve countless bad ideas. It’s important to work through the bad stuff to get to the good stuff.
I’ve got a lot of bad stuff in my working draft. A lot. Still, I accept that I must wait until the entire draft is finished before I can go hacking away with the proverbial machete.
External Guidance
Like developmental editing and manuscript evaluations, book coaching provides three benefits for authors of all types:
- Improve your writing craft skills.
- Develop your drafting process.
- Go from story idea to finished draft.
In my drafting journey, I’ve enlisted my own version of book coaches through a few edibuddies, fellow authors, and avid readers with experience in either fiction developmental editing or through reading the queer romance genre. They’ve let me pick their brains on story organization, turning points and decision points, and centering causality at every point in my story.
I hit 70,000+ words recently, and my midpoint is still fourteen chapters away. Better to overwrite than underwrite. It’s in the overwriting that I’m finding the story’s true core.
Photo by Vardan Papikyan on Unsplash
To Sum It All Up: Two Sides of the Same Creative Coin
I love fiction with every part of me. The power of language on the human experience is inexplicable. Helping an author uncover their story’s inspiration and joy and relatability within their imagination is priceless.
In my neurospicy opinion, being able to identify with queer romance authors on a personal level gives me a leg up on some of my fellow editors and coaches. I’m a bit more familiar with how hard it is to write an original-fiction story to completion, one that accurately reflects the diversity of queer relationships. More importantly, I’ve written more bad queer romance fiction than good, even in my current draft.
Yes, I have my thoughts on what makes a good story. I also recognize that those thoughts may not fully align with what an author is trying to accomplish. My strengths and weaknesses vary across storytelling principles. My professional responsibility, my obligation, then, is to see how and when we can meet in the middle. In my story and yours.
Reflecting On Your Story One Word At A Time!
