Editorial Notes = clarifying information, additional insight, annotations

Hiya Reader,

In case you need it, here's your sign to stay persistent.

Publishing is not a formula. Ask ten published writers how they got there and you'll get ten stories that don't much resemble each other — and probably didn't resemble what those writers expected, either.

Which is either terrifying or liberating, depending on the day.

Here's the thing about the writers who do get published: they're not necessarily the most talented people in the room. They're frequently not the luckiest. What they tend to have in common is that they didn't stop. They revised the thing. They sent it out again. They wrote the next one while waiting to hear about the last.

You cannot will a yes into existence. But you can be the writer who is still at the desk when it arrives.

That part — just that part — is entirely up to you.

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Example of the Week

Sometimes this is a good example—or a great one. Sometimes this is a bad example—or just a funny blooper. Sometimes a combination. You never know.

Perhaps this sign was written phonetically?

Actionable Tip of the Week

A trick to add to your self-editing toolbox right now!

Try this: tell someone what your piece is about.

Not the plot, not the premise, not the surface argument. What it's about. The thing underneath. The reason it needed to exist in the first place.

If you stumble — if you open your mouth and hear yourself say something that surprises you, or something that feels hollow, or nothing coherent at all — congratulations. You've just discovered a useful editing tool, one that costs nothing and requires no software.

The deeper subject of a piece of writing tends to stay hidden for most of the drafting process. You think you know what you're making. You may even have an outline. But the real gravitational center, the subterranean thing the whole piece is actually circling, often doesn't reveal itself until you're nearly done. This is not a failure. This is how writing works.

The problem comes when writers try to edit before they've excavated that center. They tighten sentences. They cut adverbs. They move paragraphs around like furniture. And the piece still feels wrong, because they're decorating a room without knowing what the room is for.

Speak the piece aloud to another person, or to yourself, or to a voice memo on your phone. Explain what it's doing, not what happens in it. What it wants the reader to feel or understand or question by the time they reach the last line.

Notice where you reach for words and don't find them. Notice where you over-explain, which usually means you don't quite believe what you're saying. Notice where something comes out of your mouth that wasn't in the draft at all — that unwritten sentence might be what you've been circling.

Now go back to the draft with that knowledge in hand.

Suddenly the editing questions become answerable. Does this paragraph serve the real subject, or the subject you thought you were writing about in week one? Does this scene earn its length, or is it furniture? Does the ending land where the piece always wanted to go, or where you steered it out of habit or fear?

Knowing what you're writing about tells you what belongs and what doesn't. It tells you when a section is done. It tells you (and this is the one writers most desperately need) when you're finished.

Reader Question of the Week

Rosie wrote: Who should I share my work with for feedback?

Rosie! Choose someone who has nothing to gain or lose by telling you the truth.

A boss, a mentor whose approval you're quietly auditioning for, a partner whose feelings you manage carefully, a friend who owes you one — these relationships carry weight that lands on the manuscript. The feedback you get will be shaped, consciously or not, by the shape of the relationship. They will soften. You will perform receptivity. Neither of you will quite say what you mean, and you'll leave the conversation with notes you don't fully trust.

Find instead someone lateral to you. A peer. A fellow writer at roughly the same stage. Someone who wants honest conversation about the work because that's the only thing either of you gets out of it. No hierarchy, no obligation, no subtext.

The feedback won't necessarily be gentler. It may be harder to hear. But you'll be able to trust that it's about the writing.

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Link of the Week

Terrible at small talk? Me too! These tips might help us.

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Thanks for reading!

~Helene, your writing sherpa