revisions

But I Won’t Do That: Sex and Revisions

January 14, 2019 By Bryn Greenwood 23 Comments

Many years ago, I worked for Planned Parenthood as a sex educator. My primary work was going into the community and talking to people about things we most often think of as sex ed basics: sexually transmitted infections and birth control methods. Those are important issues, but I’ve always believed that the most valuable thing I taught was negotiation, because one of the more difficult parts about sexuality is getting what you want without being coerced into what you don’t want. This is true for people of all ages, genders, and sexualities. No matter where you are in life, it’s useful to have a list that can be broken down into three parts.

What you want to do
What you might be willing to do
What you absolutely do not want to do

If you have this list in your head, it makes it a lot easier to decide how you’ll respond in a situation where you’re considering having sexual contact with another person, whether it’s someone new or someone very familiar.

Now, what the heck does this have to do with writing? It turns out, that list of three that I learned in relationship to sex has been incredibly useful to me when it comes to working through the editorial process.

In the early days of your writing, you probably got used to receiving feedback from friends, family, or beta readers. You started learning to pick and choose what feedback you were going to use and what feedback didn’t work for you. The further you get into the publishing business, though, the harder it can be to decide which suggestions to implement and which to ignore.

It may be something as simple as a revise and resubmit request from an agent who’s considering representing you, or it may be something a lot more high stakes. You may find yourself on the other side of an email exchange with an editor who has paid good money for your book, and now wants you to make revisions you don’t necessarily agree with.

You may feel a lot of pressure to do the revisions and make the agent or editor happy, because it may seem like this is your opportunity to take the next step in your writing career. Maybe this relationship is the one that will help you get closer to your professional goals. Oddly enough, it starts to sound a lot like how people talk about their romantic relationships, where sex is one of the most complicated negotiations. Similarly, revisions are likely the most complicated negotiations you’ll have in your relationships with editors and agents. This is where having that list of three can come in handy. [Read more…]

How to Process and Filter Feedback

September 19, 2018 By Annie Neugebauer 16 Comments

In my last post I talked about “which types of readers to use for feedback,” covering the pros and cons of a weekly critique group, beta readers, specialty readers, and agents and editors. Knowing where to get feedback on our work is great, but what the heck do you do with it once you have it? It might sound like a straightforward question, but any writer gathering significant feedback knows how daunting it can be to face sorting through and implementing that critique.

The good news is that there is no one correct way to go through this process. The bad news is that there is no one correct way to go through this process. Every writer, every book, and every feedback resource will require different specifics. That freedom is liberating and, sometimes, a little overwhelming. In hopes of establishing a starting place, today I’m going to share my general outline of the steps I take to process and filter reader feedback. As with all writing advice, take what works for you and leave the rest.

1. Read Feedback

Step one is fairly easy straightforward: consume the feedback. If you’re reading notes, I highly recommend finding a private, quiet place so you can go at your own pace and so you don’t have to school your reactions. If you’re listening, and if your reader doesn’t have notes to hand you after they’re done talking, go ahead and take notes as they go (unless you can record or have a killer memory). Try to resist asking too many questions, especially if you’re new. Clarifying what someone means is fine, but you’d be surprised how easily that slips into justifying or defending our intentions instead. You can sort through that part later; for now, just listen and absorb.

2. Let Yourself Feel, Notice Your Gut

You might feel things as you listen. Some of them might even be bad feelings. That’s okay. Emotions are not only important, but biologically required. So don’t beat yourself up if you feel sad, disappointed, angry, scared, overwhelmed, etc. That’s all normal. (It’s also why I generally prefer to read feedback in private.)

Of course, if you’re in person you’ll probably be socially obligated to hide or subdue some of these feelings to seem “sane” and “professional.” (Bah.) Do what you must, but even if you have to bottle it up, I highly recommend letting it out later. Let it aaaaaaall out. Let it have free reign for a while—good and bad. Be excited, be intimidated, be whatever you need to be.

And more importantly, pay attention to what you need to be. To take every drop of romance out of it: emotional reactions are data. How we feel right away upon each particular piece of feedback is invaluable information for later, so stop trying to stymie it. Instead, let it happen and take a mental note. Pay extra attention to the things that make you the most defensive.

3. Organize

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4 Ways to Make Notes in Scrivener

October 29, 2017 By Gwen Hernandez

Do you write sticky notes for revision ideas? Or maybe you add words in caps or use TK to mark spots that need fixed or require additional research. No matter what type of note you want to leave for yourself, Scrivener has an option that makes it easy to mark up your text and find your comments easily when you’re ready to deal with them.

Annotations and comments allow you to leave notes at the exact spot that needs attention. Document and project notes give you a broader scope.

And, you can use any or all of them in combination.

These are great tools to use during National Novel Writing Month—or anytime—to keep you focused on writing rather than researching, or from thinking too long and hard on your words. Stuck? Make a note and move on.

Notes are also great when you want to tag a section of text.

BONUS: If you’re visually oriented, don’t miss the fully captioned instructional video at the bottom of the post. ;-)

Annotations

Annotations are inline comments, meaning they are specially formatted text that’s embedded in your manuscript. I like to use annotations to mark places where I need more research, or when I can’t think of the perfect dialog or wording.

Annotations let you mark the problem at its source so you don’t forget about it and you can focus on writing.

To narrow the results when searching for annotations, you can add a word or set of characters at the beginning or end. For example, all the areas where I have gun questions, I added the word “gun” (brilliant, right?) somewhere in the annotation. When I’m ready to compile a list of questions for my gun expert, I can limit my search to annotations that contain the word “gun” and ignore the rest. (More on searching in a minute.)

I also use annotations to mark sections that might make good excerpts for marketing graphics.

Pros:

– Easy to spot.

– Easy to search (and narrow by text or color).

– Can be excluded when compiling (on the Footnotes & Comments tab), which means you don’t have to remove them before sending a manuscript to your agent/editor/beta reader/online retailer.

– Can be included during compile, if desired. You choose the bracketing character (e.g. [annotation here]).

Cons:

– Might be a little too “in your face” or distracting.

– Cannot view all of them at once.

– Can be searched by color, but changing colors isn’t simple.

Inserting an Annotation

Here’s how to insert an annotation.

1. Place your cursor where you want to insert the annotation.

2. Go to Format>Inline Annotation. Nothing appears to happen.

3. Start typing to see the specially formatted annotation text.

4. Go to Format>Inline Annotation to turn off annotation formatting and get back to writing.

TIP: If you find you use these frequently, memorize the keyboard shortcut to turn this mode on/off (Shift+Command+A on the Mac, Ctrl+Shift+A on Windows). [Read more…]

How to Tackle Critique Notes

June 26, 2012 By Carleen Brice

I recently exchanged my manuscript with a writer friend who also had a novel she wanted me to read. We read and edited on paper (we’re old-school that way), so I now have 300+ pages with notes, plus an “editor’s letter” she gave me summarizing her comments.

I also just wrapped a big freelance project (a 24-page special section for a trade magazine) for which I served as content editor. This booklet was reviewed by five people who all provided comments via Microsoft Word’s track changes function on different versions of each article. Part of my job was to reconcile all the different files with their different comments and questions into final documents.

Is it any wonder I’ve got editing on the brain?

Now that the monster freelance job is out the door (and I have a little window before I begin the next one), it’s time to tackle these edits. If, like me, you get a little light-headed at all the work you have to do after you’ve received a critique letter and edits, these suggestions might help.

Read the letter, then wait. If you get an editor’s letter or notes from a beta reader, it may be a good idea not to react right away. Give yourself a day, then reread it. I find that even when I’ve asked for notes and even if the notes support how I was feeling about the manuscript, I still feel a little pang at seeing the problems spelled out in black and white by somebody else. Waiting before I wade in to the work gives me a chance to have an initial “I-suck” reaction. With a little time I can then see the comments more clearly. Yay! I only partially suck.

[Read more…]