First of all, it’s not like a critique. In a critique you can say things like, “I can’t follow the action in this scene,” and then leave it up to the author to figure out why. That’s perfectly acceptable, because as the critic you’re doing the author a favor, and they’ll take what you have to offer. As an editor, I have to figure out exactly what confuses me about the action, and then say that. Saying it is the hard part. If I do my job right, the solution will be obvious to the author, even if I haven’t suggested a solution. Which ties in with my next point.

Editing is a balance of telling the author what to do and letting her decide how to do it. Except in the case of punctuation, where there is a right way and a wrong way, but even then if she feels strongly about leaving out a specific comma, that’s ultimately her decision. I have to be very careful about rewriting anything. If I can’t move around phrases she’s already used to fix it, I leave a suggested fix in a comment, then she can either take my advice as is, change it another way, or tell me to take a flying leap. Although the last one on that list might be counter-productive, since I’m an impartial observer (or at least as impartial as anyone can be), and I’m only here to make her look better. Which leads to…

The editor is there to correct mistakes, no doubt. But among some authors there’s this attitude of, “So I don’t know how to punctuate a sentence correctly, that’s what editors are for.” Let me take a moment to point out I’ve not yet edited an author with this attitude, but I’ve seen it around in the blogosphere. But let me tell you something, dear authors, this attitude is stupid. STUPID. If my harsh words pull one author away from this abyss, they will be worth it. Not only is it good to know your craft inside and out for your craft’s sake, but there’s a practical purpose for knowing the nuts and bolts, and then putting them into practice BEFORE sending it to your editor.

If I have your manuscript for 20 days, and I spend the full 20 helping you polish your words, you are going to have one tight, well-written book. A tight, well-written book will increase your reputation, generate better word-of-mouth, ergo selling more books and creating more fans. However, if I have to spend seven of those days correcting hundreds or even thousands of typos which could easily have been found before the ms came to me, then you are getting only 13 days of word polishing. We might only have time for plot and eliminating confusion, and very little time for word choices and flow.

So those are the observations I have so far. I’m sure I’ll have more as I go along, and maybe even change my mind about some of those up there. (Except for the last one. Since I basically called everyone who doesn’t agree with me an idiot I’ll have to stick by it. It’s true anyway.) I’m getting the education of a lifetime, being on this side of things.

I’m working on bringing some maturity and professionalism to the blog. Not a lot, mind you, just enough so when editors come here they don’t shriek and click away. I think I need to re-do my “about”, including bio and contact info. I came across this post about author websites from the point of view of an unpaid intern, and it reminded me that professionals who visit my site looking for information about me as an author don’t want to wade through posts about my sinuses, nor do they want to read my sad attempts at political diatribe. They want to know about my books, my experience, how to contact me, and how to contact my agent (though if they’re here it’s probably because she contacted them first).

I thought about creating two pages, one for editors and one for regular folks, the thought being that the info relevant to a visiting professional wouldn’t be buried within the site, but visible on the front page. Under each page would be sub-pages, the editor page having the professional info–contact, book descriptions, links to relevant posts, etc–and the regular folks page having the talky traditional About Me, and all the social media contact stuff. There may be some overlap.

Another thought is to have one About Me that everyone would visit, and on that page have a link for editors to click if they want. The goal is to make it easy for everybody to find what they want.

What do you think? I haven’t seen much besides the single About Me, with a vague outline of the blogger’s interests and location. I’d be grateful for a link to examples of other types.

And there is why I’m streamlining and culling this blog. When I started it I was a budding writer, rosy-cheeked and wide-eyed, finishing up my first book. I absolutely knew nobody in the world would read my blog. I imagined a cloak of invisibility based on my self-perceived importance in the blogisphere, which was no importance whatsoever. It was fine and dandy for me to shout out my writer’s angst, the struggles of finishing a manuscript, and following that, the struggles of form rejections from agents. Then I got an agent, and while I had the feeling things should change, I wasn’t sure what, exactly.

And no, I haven’t had huge rants about the inanity of any certain industry professional, nor have I given scathing reviews of any books. But I’m starting to get uncomfortable talking about the process at all. I find myself reluctant to mention anything about my writing, yet sometimes I still force myself to, because this is a writer’s blog… But I’m going to stop that. I will talk about writing in more general terms, which in the long run will probably snag more readers anyway.

The general idea in the comments yesterday was that a blog represents the road you’ve walked, and it’s nice to have that history for people to peruse. Only thing is, if I look at someone’s archives and find in January ’07 a rant against stay-at-home moms, that’s going to affect how I see that person’s present personality, even if they made peace with the SAHM who was giving them problems in January ’07 and that rant no longer applies.

I’m not the wide-eyed, over-sharing, timid person I was 3 1/2 years ago. This is my career blog, with my name on it for all the world to see. At this point, I want the blog to reflect what I’ve learned, not how I learned it.

My husband and I had a rare day off together with the kids in school. We visited the Mabee-Gerrer Museum in Shawnee, an eclectic collection of art and artifacts donated by a worldly a Catholic monk, who was an artist himself.

I realized something while examining the exhibits: I love seeing the evidence of the artist in the art. The brush strokes, the finger prints, the globs of paint, crooked lines you can only see up close…Those are the things that I love to find. I noticed several years ago that when watching a scene with an actor incidentally reflected in a background mirror, I will watch the mirror instead of the foreground. I feel like the person rather than the actor is revealed in the reflection. The actor is presenting his face, a mask for the scene, and the back side is the real him. Guess that’s weird, but I guess it’s along the same lines of loving an artist’s mistakes. It’s about revealing the person underneath the art.

And the same can be said of writers. All of them, published novelists, wannabes, bloggers…If a piece of writing interests me, I want to know all about the author. Figure out how the particular piece germinated. Don’t you?

I also learned that I’m pretty good company, especially after a glass of wine. And that underneath my shyness is a craving for face-to-face conversation. Also that people forgive most faux pas, probably because they remember their own. Who hasn’t flipped a crouton across the room?

Thursday night we had a storm with up to baseball-sized hail. The biggest hail I’d ever seen, which punched holes in my mom’s rain gutter and ruined the roof on the house across the street. I saw many cars with shattered rear windshields over the weekend, the first being in the hotel parking lot. I got video of a tight little pre-tornadic cloud rotation right over my mom’s house in Midwest City, but for some reason I can’t get it uploaded here. Maybe later.

My brother kindly gave up his bed to me to save hotel fees, and my mom gave up her SUV for the weekend so I could drive back for meals. I appreciate it so much, because staying in the hotel was out of the question this year. The gas factor was negligible, since the hotel was literally five minutes away.

My pitch session was first thing Friday morning with James Minz, senior editor at Baen. He made me feel right at home during my session, as well as the couple of times I spoke to him over the weekend. A very easygoing and knowledgeable guy, an interesting speaker, eager to help the newbies.

Minz has edited some really big-name authors, including some of my faves: Lawrence Watt-Evans, Elizabeth Haydon, and especially Catherine Asaro. We actually talked about the Skolian books a little, and he told me a funny story about the cover of Skyfall, which I may relate later. Somebody remind me.

I guess I’m skirting the real news about my pitch session, which is that he asked to see Ea’s Gift. I’d gone in pitching BVA, the newest project, but when he asked about other projects and I told him about EG, he said, “Well, I’d actually be more interested in that,” and to tell my agent to send it to him. Is that as exciting as I think it is? I’m really trying to be cool about the whole thing, but I did have a dream in which he bought EG. Of course, then he morphed into James Carvill and we got married, so I’m dubious about the prophetic nature of the dream.

Here I am right after the pitch, before the adrenaline crashed and left me limp and headachey:

So the pitch was the big event on Friday. I was wiped out but managed to go to a few more sessions (including the Minz session pictured above) before I called it a day. I skipped the evening’s activities, a cash bar reception and the J.A. Jance speech at the banquet, and my bro and I went to Borders instead and picked up some novels. I bought a Lois McMaster Bujold (how did I go so long without reading her?) and a Laurell K. Hamilton.

Saturday was actually the better day, the productive pitch session on Friday notwithstanding. I came out of my shell on Saturday, though it took a few hours. I finally figured out that most of the sessions were geared toward writers with less experience than I have, so I didn’t worry about getting to every one. I hit the high points, hung out in the central meeting area, and went home to rest when I felt like it. Met a lot of interesting people, including William (a WWII vet and electronic engineer) and Rachel (the prettiest girl in the world and an artist I could see doing my future book covers), and Wayne Wyrick (Director of the Kirkpatrick Planetarium), who made me feel right at home when I was shy and nervous. Writers are such a great group of people.

As a result of my go-with-the-flow attitude, I had plenty of energy to dress up for the reception and banquet. I ordered my first glass of wine in probably ten years with help from the lovely bartender. I chose the red Zinfandel. I felt like a real grown up rubbing elbows with editors and authors in my silver high-heels with a glass of wine in my hand. So cool.

At the banquet I hooked up with some ladies I know on the internet. Although a Jenny McCarthy look– and act-alike at the next table eclipsed us with her group’s contest wins, Jen Nipps (left) managed to pull some eyes our way with her two wins. The rest of us were wishing we’d entered something so we could be included in the excitement.

I’m in the purple, paranormal romance author Gloria Harchar and her daughter, Audrey, are to my immediate right, and Harlequin author Tessa McDermid there on the right.

Believe it or not, it was my first girl’s night out in probably ten years, perhaps the last time I had wine, and I was so jazzed to be talking to these ladies about agent issues and editor changes in such a matter-of-fact way.

So that was my weekend in a nutshell. A very large nut’s shell, to be sure, but there was much more I wanted to say. The rest will come out in bits and pieces over the week, probably, along with links and possibly more pictures, though a lot of them are blurry for some reason. I’ll have to see.

Whew.