Lawyer and Writer

This is the first of my series on the process and what I learned in hiring a freelance editor to edit my novel, The Sleeping Death. Go here to see a list of the rest of the planned topics.

Though this is a more meta topic compared to the 'how-to' nature of the rest of this series, it's actually critically important to the whole rest of the process, so it's worthwhile considering this question yourself in detail if you decide you want to go this route. Your own reasons will determine if hiring an editor is something you want to do and also exactly what you will be hiring the editor to do, because there are different options. It will also help you determine your budget.

E-Publishing Makes it Necessary

The big, overarching reason why I decided to hire an editor to go over my novel is because I am not planning to go the traditional route with this book and shop it around to mainstream publishers. Instead, I'm epublishing. This means that when I decide it's time to release the book and send it out into the world, that's it. It's done. There's no gateway that will stop it and tell me that my book is just not good enough for public consumption.

If I were intending to go the traditional route, I wouldn't necessarily have to worry about it. The publisher will provide an in-house editor who will edit my novel and help me get it ready for publishing. But in the epub, independent world, the only option is to hire someone to do it myself.

Many people who want to traditionally publish will still get a freelance editor to look it over. This is quite an investment of money considering that the publishing houses will edit your book for you, also. But if you really aren't sure that your book is good enough to even be accepted by a publisher, a manuscript consultation seems to be something marketed to you. In a later part of this series, I'll go into more detail about what manuscript consultations are.

It's Not Something I Can Do Myself

I might be able to format my book myself, and promote it. If I were artistic I might even be able to do the cover for myself. I can figure out how to upload it to the various online book stores.

But editing isn't like that. I have spent a lot of hours editing the book myself, but there comes a point where a second set of eyes is the only way to get it to that next level. I can show it to my friends and family - and I will - but I feel that a fully-trained, experienced editor, with knowledge of the genre and the field, will bring expertise to my novel that my friends and wife simply can't. And an editor is an unbiased third party who won't be afraid to tell me what's really wrong with it.

So when it comes to business, when there's something you can't do yourself, you have to pay to have someone do it for you. Writing is a business, so I'll shell out.

My Name is On This Thing

I'm looking to build a career, starting with this novel. Since I'm putting myself out there, this book will be something that some people will read and decide never to read my stuff again - while others will read it and be excited to read the next thing I put out.

When it comes down to it, I want as many people as possible to be in the second category.

I want this book to be as good as I can physically make it, before anyone buys it. It's worthwhile spending the money to do that, because the return on investment should be worth it. I'll sell more copies, not just of this book, but future ones, if this book is good enough to impress people and leave them wanting more.

So these are the three main reasons why I decided to take the plunge, open my wallet, and shell out some pretty big bucks to hire a freelance editor.

Next week I'll discuss how I prepared for my search.

Today I delved into my first big, scary self-publishing related project. Compared to this, nothing has been intimidating.

Writing is easy. I've been doing that since before I actually knew my alphabet all the way through, if you listen to my father's stories. Editing? Well, I'm new to that kind of really deep, gut-wrenching editing that involves tearing a book right down to the bones and rebuilding it into something far better, but I had a guide, and ultimately it just comes down to a lot of work.

But today, I started shopping for an editor. See: my icon.

I discovered a few things:

1. It's more expensive than I hoped, but hopefully not so expensive as to make it completely impossible for me to afford a good solid edit (And I want a good one, so I can see what to look for next time)


2. There are a lot of freelance editors out there, holy crap, but the majority of what they're editing are short things, like school essays, articles, and resumes.


3. The playing field is unregulated and there doesn't seem to be any kind of official directory or anything, unlike the directory of agents and publishers in the Writer's Market

I was really hoping that Writer's Market would actually have a directory of editors who had left publishing houses and gone freelance, but alas, I searched the whole book and it was not to be. So I'm left on my own for now, swimming in a morass of job boards and examining curriculum vitae.

I'm certain of only a few things: I want someone who knows what they're doing, and the majority of the postings out there are no better qualified than I am. But I also want someone who is going to be fairly reasonably priced. So I strongly suspect that I'm looking for a unicorn.

This is all very intimidating to me. Sitting at my desk by myself bleeding words is free. I can do that forever, but actually shelling out cash to a person who is supposed to in some way help me improve my book is a huge risk.

I have internalized the axiom that "all money flows to the author" but the problem is that when it comes to hiring a freelance editor to edit my book, I am going to have to pay them. In advance. I can't just drop my book in the hands of a publishing house who has promised to edit and publish my book for me, and have them pay to get it done. It's all up to me and my ability to pick someone good.

And if things don't work out, there's every chance I will never make that money back.

On the plus side, there seem to be rating systems and resumes and things out there, so I can vet people to a certain degree. I can find someone whom I click with, who edits science fiction and fantasy novels, specifically and rely on their expertise. If things work well, I will hire them again, so they have a vested interest in pleasing me. All of these things give me hope.

I did send out three emails and requested quotes. We'll see how that goes.

I had some interest in this so I'm going to make an attempt to do something a little different. This is a bit of an experiment, so we'll see how it goes, and I may do more if people want to see more.

As you may know, I've been taking an editing course through Holly Lisle's Forward Motion Writer's Board for, um, a while now. Law school has stretched this out a lot longer than I would have liked! Forward Motion is a writing support forum, which I will review properly someday when I get around to it.

The course I'm doing is called How To Revise Your Novel. It's a 22-week course, and highly, highly recommended. I'm not even done, and the number of things I've learned about writing is staggering. Again, I'll do a proper review of the course at some point. It's definitely on my list. I just want to finish it first.

Anyway, in a nutshell, the course involves reviewing your novel multiple times, looking for various specific things, such as conflict, character consistency, pacing, etc. You fill out worksheets and make notes, and it's all very structured. In week 17, you finally take everything that you've learned about your novel, good and bad, and start actually revising it. Exciting!

So what I thought I would do is scan my first scene and post it for your edification/amusement and do a bit of a commentary on what I'm changing and why. If there's enough interest, I'd be willing to continue the commentary in future posts, too.

Keep in mind that this is going to look really rough. I'm doing the edits by hand, and I will type them all in later, so I apologize if you can't read some of my handwriting.

I've left the pictures as links to another page, because they're extremely large. If you want to be able to easily flip back and forth between the picture and the commentary without having to hit the back button, right-click on the link and select "Open Link in New Tab".

Page 1

As you can see from the crossed-out page number in the upper right-hand corner, this scene was originally page 135 of the manuscript. I was never happy with the original first scene, because I felt it started too slow and was too awkward in terms of revealing the world I have built, without info-dumps and irrelevant exposition. So after a lot of thought and poking around, I decided to pull this scene into the beginning, as a flash-forward. I help to indicate this by including a date at the top of this scene and subsequent ones, as well as indicating that it's the year 316 "After Breakthrough", which won't make sense yet, but will later.

I think it makes a far more intriguing first scene, introduces the main character, Liilan, and one of the main themes of the book, which is about Liilan's conflict between keeping his career intact, and searching out and reporting the truth, which is what journalists are supposed to be doing.

You'll see a lot of weird number codes in my draft. These are references to worksheets that I've filled out. Some of them refer to problems in the manuscript that I want to change (for example, [1Ba10 #8] at the top refers to an entry in a worksheet that points out that Liilan broke his cellphone in a previous scene, but now suddenly he has it. I solved this problem by deciding to make him not break his cellphone, and in fact I will be removing the whole thing that caused him to break it in the first place, because it related to a sub-plot that never went anywhere and which I am cutting from the book)

For plot reasons, I've decided that it's early winter, so I made it colder than it had originally been in the first draft. I also edited those middle paragraphs to account for the fact that the reader won't have read the scene before it, to introduce the existence of two characters, Mortis and Phames, without referring to events that would just confuse the reader.

I also mention that Phames is a vox, but I'm not explaining what that is, yet.

Page 2

On page 2, we introduce Salmo, Liilan's editor. Because this is now the first scene, so Salmo hasn't been seen before, I fiddled with his description. I also added a line to show how tired Liilan is, as he's been dealing with a lot of stuff over the last few days.

Originally when I wrote the first draft, I put all of the new words I invented in italics. This got tiresome pretty quickly, so I made a note to myself to remove the italics. I think this melds the Aerian language into the book more seamlessly, especially since the terms are used so much throughout the course of the book.

Again I fiddled with description to introduce concepts the reader was going to have to understand since this is the first scene of the novel, and removed references to Phames' safehouse, since I think this would be confusing at this stage of the book, and not really necessary. I added more description to show Liilan's been busy, not at work, and dealing with badness, even if the reader doesn't know what that badness is yet.

Also I should mention that in the original draft, Liilan had been shot it the leg before this. I decided that he shouldn't have been shot in that previous scene, so I am taking out references to his injury throughout this scene.

Page 3

The scene goes on with Liilan trying to give his boss the story of the century, and Salmo acting more and more weird and agitated. Liilan suspects far earlier than in the original draft that Salmo's turned on him, even though he doesn't want to believe it, because it's pretty obvious by this point that something is terribly wrong.

I also include a few references to the incredible - almost unbelievable - length of their friendship. Three centuries? How could anyone live that long?

I also had Salmo refuse to say the word 'dead'. Liilan says it for him, in fact, showing far less fear at the concept, and more acceptance of it. This suggests that there's something about death that Salmo is too terrified of to even mention, while Liilan is coming to accept it.

Page 4

The police finally strike, and Liilan's fears are realized. Instead of being totally shocked, he's angry at Salmo for betraying him, while Salmo is almost afraid of him. The police treat Liilan like a dangerous criminal, and it's clear that Salmo has his own problems that he was trying to avoid.

Page 5

The fight with the police officers continues on, with Liilan unable to do much, because he's a journalist, not a fighter, and there are lots of guys holding him. Also for some reason I kept referring to the van as a truck, so I fixed that.

And then the previously-mentioned Mortis and Phames appear - and they have wings. I describe the wings (again, because this is the first scene they haven't been described previously, and I want the reader to have a few extra seconds to notice that something weird is going on). And Mortis does something that shouldn't be physically possible. The police officers try to run, but Liilan thinks that that's pretty pointless - you can't outrun Death. Mortis is Death.

Page 6

Mortis actually has amnesia and doesn't know what she is (though by this point in the story, she's learned that she's the vox of death). In the original draft, she couldn't even remember her name, and Liilan gave her a new one, Umos. But the new-name thing never really was significant and she ultimately learned her real name and started using it, so I am removing all references to the Umos name.

I also decided because of the magical physics of this world that guns are pretty useless weapons. I was fairly inconsistent about the use of guns throughout the first draft, so I'm cleaning up any mention of them. So Liilan wasn't shot in that previous scene, and the police don't carry guns to shoot uselessly at Mortis. Liilan does get shot in this scene, though, by a sniper rifle. It shocks him that anyone would bother using a gun, but for the single shot, it's mortally effective, and we are left at the end of the first scene with a cliffhanger.

I hope you enjoyed this, and I'd welcome comments and feedback! What do you think of the scene so far? Does it intrigue you and would it make you want to read more? Or are the number of things I leave out to whet the appetite making it a little confusing?

Also if there's else anything that I've changed and you're curious why, please ask! I pointed out most of the major ones, but I'd be happy to discuss any of it. I have reasons for pretty much every word I've changed or added.

I've always been a great multitasker. I'm one of those people who is nearly always doing at least two things at once - answering email while watching a movie, listening to podcasts about some topic that interests me while driving to work, or chatting with a friend online while reading cases for a class.

It's one of those things that's both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because you seem to be getting so much done in a shorter period of time. But it's a curse because quite often you actually aren't - you're just taking the same amount of time or even longer to do both things, because you're constantly interrupting yourself.

It's a vice that I'm actually trying to break myself of to a certain extent. I'm trying to get out of the habit of pausing while writing to answer just one email and "give my brain a break". I'm also forcing myself to turn off the internet while I study so I can get it all out of the way quickly and get back to doing something more fun.

To be honest, it's been surprising to me just how quickly I can get things done if I don't multitask, because I've always been a great proponent of multitasking.

I also multitask while I write, and always have. Now, I don't mean the kind of multitasking that makes you die in Write or Die, where you interrupt your flow to reply to an email and such. That's bad multitasking. That's the kind of multitasking that, as I said before, I've already been actively trying to train myself out of doing.

The kind of multitasking I'm talking about now is working on more than one project at once. I've always felt that this is good multitasking! For example, while writing a novel, I might also be planning the next one. So one day I might be in a writing mood and put a good 2000 words into my draft, but the next day the well is a little drier so I put a few hours into research and working on my outline for the next novel. This seems great! By the time I get my draft done, I'm pretty close to starting my next novel, while I let the first one sit, and then maybe when I get the next one done I start editing the first one, and there's always work moving through all three stages.

I think to a certain extent, I have to do this. You have to have days off, to think about things and let things percolate. When a draft is finished, you have to let it sit a bit, get some distance, work on something else for a while, so you can edit it objectively.

But where I've been running into problems lately is that I have too much going on. It wasn't so bad early on, when I was writing a draft and planning the next novel, and that was really all I had to work on. I could flip back and forth between the two without letting either project drop too far from my consciousness.

However, adding editing into the mix is messing me up a bit.

My current situation is a great illustration. I'm heavily involved in editing The Sleeping Death. It's weighing on my consciousness nearly all the time and I spend a lot of time poking at it mentally, scribbling down notes, or just pondering different options. Occasionally I take some time off to prod at the planning for my next novel, whose working title is Tris.

The problem is, I'm 30,000 words into a new draft of a book called Dreaming, and I haven't worked on it since November! I started it for NaNoWriMo, and I'm still excited about it - this isn't a dead draft or anything. I have a full outline. I know where I'm going and it was going well before I was forced to put it aside for exams.

It's something I fully intend to work on, but since I was interrupted and pulled out of that world so long ago now, it's going to take me some time to review, refamiliarize myself, and get back into the writing groove with this novel. And I just don't feel like I have the mental space to do that when I'm so heavily involved in editing The Sleeping Death. Especially since I already have two completed manuscripts, editing and getting those ready to publish logically has higher priority than finishing a third one or starting a new draft.

Poking at the outline for Tris seems to be easier than working on my Dreaming draft. I can do a little research here and there, or fiddle with notes, without having to sit down and really immerse myself.

This is a pattern that, upon reflection, I've suffered from many times. I'll start a novel and it'll go great for the first while, but as the middle happens it gets slower going, and something that took me a month to get 30-50,000 words will take six months to get to 100,000 words, or longer. It happened with The Sleeping Death. It happened with Otherwhere. And now it's going to happen to Dreaming.

I think it's a matter of priorities, and staying committed. I'm fortunate that, unlike many first-time writers, I do have the staying power. I generally don't start to hate a novel or drop it and start something shiny and new. But when I let it sit for a while, it is harder to pick back up, and by the end of the whole process it's been so long since I started the beginning of the draft that there are inconsistencies, forgotten details, and my writing ability has improved.

What I feel I should have done when I finished my exams was put real effort into getting back into Dreaming, finished that off, and then committed not to start a new draft until I had completed the edits on The Sleeping Death. I need to start working on things one-thing-at-a-time, with only short (like one day) stints into other projects if I'm just really not in the mood or stuck. I need to commit to working on the priority project even if it's hard, and not let myself get distracted.

It's an experiment at this stage, but I'm hopeful that this will be something that will work better for me.

So how about you, do you work on many projects at once? If you do, how do you keep all the balls in the air? Do you have any tricks you use or do you just let them all fall as they may?