I Took the Plunge and Maybe You Should, Too: Writing Workshops and Developmental Editors
By Kim Bullock | November 28, 2022 |
Around this time last year, my mom said four words guaranteed to keep anyone up at night.
“I found a lump.”
If that weren’t anxiety producing enough, a diagnostic mammogram required a referral and she had no primary care physician. Those accepting new patients were booked solid for months because so many had delayed routine care during the initial COVID surges.
Two things were clear. First, she was going to have a wait on her hands to find out what, if anything, that lump signified. Second, I was going to make a bad situation worse if I gave in to the existential terror the word ‘cancer’ provokes. That demon had already claimed both my grandmothers and an aunt. A second aunt was securely in its clutches and passed away a few weeks ago.
The manuscript languishing on my laptop was the obvious place to pour all my nervous energy, but panic and focus aren’t exactly a winning combination, especially when I’m stuck. I needed a sense of direction. Accountability. Deadlines.
I needed something like Kathryn Craft’s “Your Novel Year” class.
I’d considered taking it before. I knew Kathryn, I loved her novels, and I suspected I’d work well with her. Barreling through a shitty first draft isn’t something I’ve ever managed to do, though. If forced to participate in NaNoWriMo, I would be clinically insane by Thanksgiving.
It took a nudge from our own Therese Walsh, combined with a major life upheaval, to get me to take the plunge.
If you have ever wondered whether this class or something like it would be worth the time and expense for you, here are some things to consider.
Know your mentor/coach
Handing over unfinished work, particularly in the early stages, involves some major creative risk. Trust is an essential component to a successful working relationship. If you can meet your proposed mentor, at a conference or at least online, you will be better able to gauge their critique style, how flexible they may be, whether you find them approachable or intimidating, etc. Do they have published novels? If so, read them. If they don’t wow you, hesitate before signing any contracts. If your prose is uber-descriptive and theirs is spare, know that you will be encouraged to rein yourself in. This isn’t a dealbreaker if you are secure in your own voice. If prone to blindly follow every suggestion, proceed with extreme caution. Do they write in the same genre (ideal) or at least have a lot of experience with it? If you write women’s fiction and they write spy thrillers, your proposed mentor may have the biggest name and the greatest connections and still be of no actual help to you.
Know that this is an investment with no guarantees
Intensive workshops, especially those involving developmental edits and individualized coaching, aren’t cheap. You will be making an investment, financially and emotionally. To get the most out of the experience, you must be willing to sacrifice a significant chunk of time and energy. In exchange, you will very likely have an improved manuscript, maybe even one that is publication worthy. Many good novels, even great novels, still do not sell. Are you prepared for that possibility?
Know your process
If you are the sort of writer who sets word count goals of 1000 words a day and consistently meets them, you’ll have no issue keeping up with any intensive class. If, like me, you start off each writing session going back to the beginning of any chapter you are working on and adding another layer of polish before writing any new words, you may need a mentor who is open to reviewing revised work, too.
Is your comfort zone crippling you?
Not letting anyone see your work until, say, draft 25, may ensure that the beta readers see flawless prose. However, the most beautiful sentences in the world will do nothing for your manuscript if that chapter you spent a month on doesn’t move the story forward. A good developmental editor will pick up on that in draft one or two, which may save you twenty drafts of said chapter, and countless drafts in subsequent chapters.
(Yeah, guilty as charged on this one. Thanks, Kathryn.)
Also, the work will never be perfect. Waiting to show it to anyone until you internally debate the necessity of certain comma placements might just be a convenient excuse to spin your wheels indefinitely. If this sounds like you, forcing a break in that cycle might be liberating.
How thick is your skin?
If your chosen class involves developmental editing, and you’ve never been through that process before, be prepared for a lot of virtual red ink. Much of it may not be of the ‘rethink this sentence structure’ or ‘this gesture made me cry’ variety. You may have key points in your plot deconstructed or, worse, told that your story has no discernible plot at all. You may be told that your main character is unlikable or that their story goal is unclear. You may be asked why the reader should care about any of these people. Chances are good that feedback days will involve big emotions, both good and bad. If something is especially triggering, that is a good sign the editor is onto something. (Yes, I speak from experience.)
Better to hear this from a paid editor than an agent or a publisher.
There is no such thing as perfect timing
When I signed up for Your Novel Year, I thought that 2022 would be a time of high productivity. One child lives full-time in her college town. The other is still home but largely self-sufficient. I am lucky enough to not require a paycheck to survive. Had I known last December that this year would be spent ricocheting from one hardship and hassle to another, I would have claimed it would be impossible for me to get any writing done. I didn’t have staring down my own mortality and choosing to remove five organs from my body on my bingo card any more than my mom had cancer warrior on hers. Nevertheless, I persisted.
Set realistic goals
Had I been able to stay on pace, Your Novel Year would have allowed for a developmental edit of up to 300 pages of material. I knew that was unrealistic for me, though I had hoped to get to 200. Counting revisions, I’ve done that, but my actual page count in the novel just surpassed 100. Am I disappointed in myself? No. Do I feel the class was worth the time and investment? Absolutely. Those 100 pages are now rock-solid, and I have a clear path forward from here. This would not have happened without Kathryn’s guidance. (And no, she is not paying me to say that.)
What about you? Have you taken an intensive writing course? Worked with a coach? Hired a developmental editor? Was it helpful? Do you have any tips to share?
Kim (she/her) has an M.A. in English from Iowa State University. She writes mainly historical fiction, though has also contributed non-fiction articles to historical and Arts and Crafts publications in both the United States and Canada. She has just finished The Oak Lovers, a novel based on the rather colorful life of her great-grandfather, landscape painter Carl Ahrens.
[coffee]
I do wonder about these kinds of intensives, so thank you very much for sharing your experience and insights.
As for everything else you’re dealing with personally… Big, big hug.
Update: I clicked through to read about The Oak Lovers and am hooked!
Thank you, Kristan! The Oak Lovers is finished – just trying to get representation. Working on a new one in the meantime. :-)
I think at some point, if we’re in this for the long haul, we realize that we need to invest not just time but money to learn our craft.. After numerous workshops and stints with two different coaches on a particular story, I had a full Ms.evaluation by an editor I trusted. She told me that in order to satisfy genre expectations, I needed to re-work certain elements of the book. It was something I already knew I needed to do but had been avoiding for all kinds of reasons (another whole story). Still, I panicked. But I knew that this was a leveling-up moment. Three months hence, I’m feeling like a different writer. I trust myself to do the heavy lifting where before I didn’t. I trust myself to be afraid but not stopped in my tracks. Thank you for being so candid about your process. And I will keep you and your mom in my thoughts for all good outcomes.
Thank you, Susan! After surgery and radiation, my mom is cancer free now. Due to some questionable family history with female cancers, her surgeon recommended she get genetic testing, and she was positive for a mutation. Not BRCA, thankfully, but it still puts her at much higher risk, especially for ovarian cancer. She gets that surgery next year. Because she had the gene, I tested and I’m positive, too. I opted for the recommended hysterectomy to mitigate that risk, and will just carefully monitor the rest. My younger daughter tested and is all clear. The older one is nervous about it, and is choosing to wait, which is fine because nothing would be done until she’s about 40 no matter what.
Glad you had a positive experience with an editor. It was time to make an investment. I’ve been hovering at that ‘this is great, but…” level for decades now!
I took the plunge and landed in Kathryn Craft’s knowledgeable cocoon. “Your Novel Year” is the crème de la crème of writing courses and the biggest bang for your buck. I keep my notes from her classes (in an oversized binder) next to my computer and revisit them often. LC Warren YNY 2020 alumna
I think of you and your novel often Lisa! Glad to know you’re making good use of those handouts and notes!
She really is fantastic!
Yay, so delighted that you are nearing the end of this journey: writing a novel! I also clicked over and loved the paintings. Art in all forms is inspiring. So is living one’s life of family and children, of health issues and day to day challenges. Bravo, Kim.
Hi Elizabeth – The Oak Lovers has been finished for quite some time, and is the one I go back and forth on about sending more queries or self-publishing. It can be very difficult to sell biographical novels about people who aren’t household names. I’m working on an entirely different book while I decide.
2023 is my year and reading this I know I am ready and making a wise investment. Thanks so much Kim for the encouraging insights. I look forward to news on how your revisions unfold. Enjoy coffee!
Thank you, Torrie! Coffee is life.
P.S. So much to love in the Oak Lovers notes and pictures. A real treat.
Thank you! It certainly was a labor of love to write. That one is done. I just need to find it a home!
Kim, I’ve hired developmental editors a couple of times, and though I was initially taken aback by some suggestions and interpretations (and part of my surprise was definitely ego-based defensiveness), I found, after some deep breathing, many useful recommendations for changes that strengthened the work. Thanks for a careful overview of how to set yourself up for best results.
I hear you on the ego-based defensiveness, Tom. An added challenge for me is the way that I write in layers. Turning in a first or second draft feels so early to me because often it isn’t really fleshed out and polished like later drafts. This makes my immediate (inner) reaction to be along the ‘well, it’s not done yet’ lines. Turns out it doesn’t need to be done for an editor to see that a chapter doesn’t move the story forward like it needs to.
Great article with some helpful tips on the process of working with a developmental editor. I, too, have worked with Kathryn, and second all your points of recommendation. And I had to chuckle when you mentioned that an editor might say, “Nobody would care about these characters.” Kathryn actually said that to me when she helped me with my novel, Evelyn Evolving: A Story of Real Life. It centers on my mother’s life, and I’d written too much of it like a straight biography. She said something to the effect of, “Nobody but you and members of your family are going to be interested in the book.”
Whoa! Wow!
But then I thought about that, as well as her suggestions for taking a different approach to the writing, and started over. After all the rewrites, the book was eventually picked up by a small publisher, and has been read by more than just me and my family. :-)
Kathryn is a friend and colleague from our years of both contributing to The Blood Red Pencil blog, and I took the plunge to work with her because of the expertise that was so evident in her blog posts. Her help with my novel was worth every penny of the cost.
Oh dear god Maryann, I hope that’s not a direct quote, even though I’m sure that’s how you heard it. Grabbing the reader is both art and craft, to be sure. So happy with the way things turned out for you!
Kathryn doesn’t pull punches BUT she also is fantastic and helping brainstorm with you to find a solution that works. My novel is so much better because of her. I probably would have stayed stuck forty pages in without her help.
First: a quick note from Kim to let you know she has JURY DUTY today but will be back on the site later to reply to comments.
Kim, thanks for this behind-the-curtain look at joining an Intensive. I’m not at all surprised to hear that (1) it’s been challenging and (2) you’ve derived a load of benefits. Very glad to hear you have the foundation for the book well in hand.
Write on, friend!
Thank you, Therese for posting about my jury duty. I thought I’d be back home by lunchtime like last time. Alas, I was one of the “lucky” ones to get to stay all day and come back tomorrow! Yea, me!
Thank you, also, for giving me the nudge.
Kim this post was such a pleasant surprise to find in my inbox today! Every single point you make here is wonderful, but I’d like to chime in on the last one, setting realistic goals. Those of us raised frugally often feel we must do all the things to get our money’s worth, whether that’s knocking yourself out to attend every single session at a conference or making full use of every aspect of a program—when customization may be way more useful. A goal is something to keep us on track while we are striving, after all. You had real-life obstacles to work around as well as all of the expected writing challenges, but because you honored your own writing process, you achieved solid outcomes. That’s the way to stay on track! I’m excited to see this story come to full fruition.
2022 has definitely been the year to keep on giving. Now I’m in home remodeling hell AND got picked for a multi-day trial jury. The interruptions are almost becoming comical at this point. I want to visit Vaughn and make use of his free room over garage. Then I might get some real progress made.
Thank you for your patience and flexibility this year!
Very interesting to see how these sorts of workshops function. Thanks for the explanation.
(And forgive me for offering this unasked for advice, but your mother should be able to visit an Urgent Care or some sort of walk-in clinic, and a doctor there can examine the lump and surely give her a referral for a mammogram. She should not wait one day longer without doing this. I fervently hope all goes well with her.)
In hindsight she absolutely should have done that. I even mentioned it. She did get in, she did have cancer. Thankfully not a horribly aggressive form. After surgery and radiation she is all clear. She will have a preventative hysterectomy next year. After finding out that I also have that gene mutation, I already took care of that. Good times..
I’m so relieved she’s in the clear.