Praise to the Independent Editor

I used to greatly discourage independent editors, even just last year. I used to claim they were a waste of money because an independent editor doesn't guarantee your novel's going to get published. Instead I recommended wonderful beta readers, because if you can find the right one, they can be just as good as an independent editor.

Now here I am writing a blog post on praising independent editors and what an extremely useful asset they are to the world of publishing. Perhaps I'm being biased because I get my IE for free in exchange for my intern services (no monetary payment involved. Good. Because I only work 20 hours for every paycheck I earn twice a month). But seriously, the critique I received on my first chapter was something beta readers never ever pointed out.

First, I want to clarify that my beta readers aren't bad at all. In fact, they were excellent and I am EXTREMELY grateful for what they've done for me. Beta readers are wonderful when it comes to finding out just what type of audience you can target for your novel, and whether or not you have the interest of the average person. However, they don't always have the knowledge of what's actually going on in the publishing industry and what's going to sell versus what's not.

My IE actually does, and so her critique stemmed mostly from what agents are looking for (and a little of her personal tastes). Beta reader critiques generally stem from their personal tastes. 90% personal and 10% by the book. Heck, as an aspiring IE myself (or editor of a pub house), my critiques are still 90% personal and 10% by the book, but the feedback my IE is giving me is slowly changing that. See? She's even useful for my dream career. Not only am I learning to improve as a writer, I'm using her feedback to improve as an editor. A little job shadowing, I suppose.

Okay, so I'm super glorifying IEs when I know people out there who have been accepted by agents merely through beta reader feedback alone. Everyone has a different view. Most of my beta readers seemed to have enjoyed my original chapter one, but I took my IE's feedback to heart because she had a point. My chapter one, though it may appeal to a certain group of people, had no marketability, no reason for an agent to want to keep reading. I mean, there might be an agent out there who'd enjoy it, but I want to attempt to appeal to as many as possible and not just receive a partial/full or two here and there. I want partial/full requests from a variety of agents.

So this is where we get into some serious gray area. As I've said before, I know people who have landed agents with just beta reader feedback alone. However, I don't think I can be one of those people. It might be because my story, as my most recent beta reader pointed out, is radically different from anything she's ever read, and she's years older than I am. So because this story is different, it's probably safer for me to receive the feedback of a professional rather than the feedback of someone who doesn't always have that leg into what's going on.

All in all, use your judgment when choosing whether or not to go on beta reader feedback alone, or to choose an IE. IEs can get pricy, but a good one is invaluable, as my IE is.

Zombie Photo Shoot

Yesterday I did a zombie photo shoot for Sorean: A Gothic Magazine, and these are all the rejects. I originally wanted to include three, but decided on only one of them, as it was the strongest of the three and does a lot better standing alone than in conjunction with the other two I wanted to include. I'm not posting the one that's going to be published, but here are the many edits I experimented with on the rejects:

New Adult

So I totally should have blogged about this a lot sooner, but I have a million other things I have to do, and blogging non-profit is not at the top of that list.

In any case, last Wednesday's YALITCHAT was also its anniversary, so Happy Late Anniversary, YALITCHAT! Although we were supposed to be primarily talking about YALITCHAT itself, somehow a lot of us got wrangled up in the topic of New Adult, a term used strictly by St. Martin's Press, but not really an official genre or anything.

New Adult, as I've gathered, is about college-age students, kids, people, adults, what have you. It revolves around college lives, with other plot elements, like maybe fighting off an evil dragon while trying to earn a law degree at Harvard.

Our biggest argument revolved around whether or not teens would buy "New Adult" fiction. There were several assumptions they wouldn't because they can't really relate to the college crowd. There were also several assumptions they would because of their curiosity about college. Then, there was the final verdict from someone in the publishing business that it would neither appeal nor sell to them.

Truth is, this is all a bunch of assumption, including the final verdict. We don't really know what teens want. We can only guess and throw caution to the wind. The YA genre itself was probably a chance publishers took back when it was still new. I think New Adult (or whatever) will be the same.

All in all, what do I think? I think New Adult would sell to a teenage crowd. And maybe it's because of my own high school experiences, but I was genuinely afraid to start college. I know I wasn't the only one either. It's scary stuff when your teachers are constantly drilling into your head how much harder college is going to be, how strict the professors are going to be, and how SO VERY important it is to get a college education. Some high school students just feel like they can't live up to these expectations, and so this fear of college is genuine.

In fact, the high school I graduated from has dropped tech prep altogether and is forcing everyone on a college prep track. This can't possibly be the only high school that has had this insane idea. I'm sure there are thousands of high school students all across America with this ridiculous pressure to get into college.

And this pressure, I'm going to assume, is new. I'm assuming this based on what my parents have told me. My parents have told me that standardized tests didn't exist at the schools they went to, that the pressure of getting into college was almost non-existent, and no students were ever pressured into taking high-level classes like AP or dual enrollment or gifted. Dual enrollment, from what my parents have told me, didn't even exist in their day!

So because of all this, wouldn't a high school student want to read a book that shows college isn't as crazy as everyone makes it seem? Sure, the experience differs for every individual, but that's the same with a high school experience. My high school experience wasn't bad at all, and was quite bland compared to the high school experiences I've read about in YA novels. My different experience didn't make the novel any less likable or relatable: it just gave me a different perspective.

Okay, so maybe back then so-called New Adult would have been a hard sell. But it's unbelievable how, even in one's freshman year, college is being stressed to such an extent that I believe it's increasing drop-out rates (perhaps I'm exaggerating and going insane, but I seriously think this pressure increases them). Freshman are no longer told to enjoy their high school experiences and make the best of them. They're told to start thinking about their careers now, what college they want to go into, and so on and so forth.

Because of all this pressure, I sincerely believe teens would be interested in reading about a freshman's experience in college. Maybe not sophomore, but definitely freshman, because college is so new and that teen mindset is still present.

A Quick Note

I just want to note the reason I deleted my literary posts is because I recently started taking a Literary Criticism class, and for the whole first day we spent talking about what literature was. We inevitably came to the conclusion there is no easy way to define it, and my awesome PhD-wielding professor said she would find someone calling commercial fiction literature totally acceptable.

I Have a Dark Secret

So if you don't know yet, I intern for Georgia McBride's fabulous YALITCHAT: YALITCHAT as its Editorial and Communications Intern, but primarily editorial.

Several weeks ago she asked me to edit the entire website, and I did. Well, yesterday, she sent an e-mail back reporting that people were saying there were still typos. I just went O_o to the whole thing, because I panned each page about three times AND used MS Word to boot. She then told me she was having two other people, plus herself, I believe, check the pages as well.

This got me thinking about editing in general, both novels and magazines and anything that's ever needed editing. Self-editing is included in this as well.

Have you, as a writer, ever sent anything out to a beta reader, only to have it returned with the beta reader pointing out things that look like they should have been obvious (blatant typos) before you sent it off? That's happened to me on several occasions. It's crazy how the human eye, even if you are being as careful as possible, can still gloss over things that should seem obvious.

When I went back into editing the YALITCHAT pages, I did find several typos that I couldn't even believe I glossed over! This makes me grateful that Georgia did employ others to look as well.

And novels: we all know it takes an entire editorial staff to spruce up a novel, and some novels still get published with typos. Crazy right?

As for me, when I'm editing a piece for Sorean, I'll go over it about six times, or however many times it takes me to stop finding errors. (Believe me, I do reach that limit, unlike with my own stories.)

But all of this just has me thinking how even the most simplest thing, whether it's a one-page report or a memo, can still have typos because of how careless the human eye can be, whether or not you're trying to be careful.

In conclusion, my dark secret is that editors are far from perfect. Some people out there get absolutely annoyed when they find typos in published novels and believe it's some sort of amateurism on the editor's part. But these people have absolutely no indication of what the editorial process is like, or even understand their own eyes, for that matter.

Those tricky, deceitful eyes!

Why Can't They?

A lot of my blog posts revolve around random discussions I happen to find on various writing boards and what not. This discussion revolved around teen fiction versus adult fiction (silly, discussion, in my opinion), and a lot of people said they enjoyed adult fiction more because you can write about a broad range of experiences that you can't with teen fiction. My only answer to this is why? Sure, I'd find it hard to read a novel about a teen doctor (there are teen geniuses, but I don't think the average teen wants to read about those, because teen geniuses can be perceived as arrogant), or even a teen lawyer. But as far as emotional possibilities, there are just as many emotional possibilities, if not more, for teens as there are for adults.

People seem to forget that there are teens in the world who have experienced more than some adults will ever experience, and have seen more of the world than some adults ever will. Just because they're young doesn't mean they lack experience. Experience can be gained through age, but if you're forty years old and have never moved from where you were born and haven't really traveled, then I'm not going to trust you as a voice of authority on life experience. I'm going to trust the sixteen-year-old army brat who has moved around with his or her parents and has visited exotic places, like Italy, Africa, or Japan.

Continuing on, someone replied that it's ridiculous to write a story about a teen who goes to war and makes enemies. Said person also used an example that adult fiction is more complex because a 40 year old can get arthritis while loading a gun (a teen can have an epileptic attack while loading a gun. *gasp!* Teens and epilepsy? That's preposterous!). In any case, why can't a teen go to war over the summer and make enemies, especially if it's a fantasy novel, an alternate universe of sorts, that requires teens to join the military once they turn sixteen? It's very possible. Hundreds of years ago, that would have been the case with teen males.

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, is an excellent example of some of the things teens are capable of. The Hunger Games is the story of Katniss Everdeen in a place called Panem where, to show the power of the Capitol, names are drawn from different districts, and these children are forced to fight in what are called The Hunger Games. They essentially fight to the death, and the last one standing wins. This is analogous to a war veteran. So, if Katniss Everdeen can win The Hunger Games (and I loved The Hunger Games because it seemed so real), then why can't Katniss go off and fight in a war? Granted, she's female, and there are problems with that, and yada, yada, yada, but why can't an author put her in that situation? Suzanne Collins is very realistic with Katniss' skills, and I never once found her a haughty character for all the things she can do that I can't, because her skills are portrayed realistically.

Teens are so much more than the ditsy, hormone-infested, love sick teens that some YA novels portray them as. Teens throughout history have been kings and queens, authors and poets, martyrs, fighters, parents, and a multitude of things adults are or have been.

So why can't YA fiction touch upon the broad range of emotional experiences that adult fiction touches upon?

A Book's Success

[I'd like to make a note that I am not at all an expert on what sells a book or anything of the sorts. This is merely my opinion on a matter I've found troubling for quite a while. ]

We all know about the insanely popular series called Twilight that has sold millions. There are a lot of people out there who question why it's so popular, and then there are others who blame it on advertising, these said advertisers marketing to the "dumb" the "weak" the "beyond stupid."

I find this offensive, not because I'm a fan of Twilight, but because, although marketing helps get word of a book out there, I do not believe it fully helps the sales of a book. Advertising is an amazing tool to use to get the word of a book out there, since word of mouth can only take a product so far. That's all it does. It doesn't force people to buy books.

And you know what the great thing about books are? You can try them out before you buy them. You can read the entire thing in the bookstore if you want, the first five pages, the blurb, the plot summary, all while never having to pay for it. If you want the book after all that, you can choose to buy it. Of course, some people make the mistake of buying a book they find out they don't like, but I know for me that's rare. Most books I buy are books I end up loving because I know how to look through a book and see if it's something I know I'm going to enjoy.

With this in mind, why do people believe advertising contributed to the insane success of Twilight? Sure, without advertising, Twilight may not have sold as much as it did, but those same people who bought it and loved it could also be the same people who bought it and hated it. Advertising didn't tell them to love Twilight. The people who bought the book chose to love it.

Of course, I know there exist sheeple out there who love something just because it's popular, but for the most part, I think Twilight sold itself. There's something in it people love, and I hate it when elitists debate why it's so popular (negatively, mind you). People love it for their own reasons, and to whine about its popularity is just plain arrogant.

Do I wish some of the books that I love could be more popular than Twilight? Well, yes, but I think that's the case with anyone who loves a book he or she feels is underrated.