Not even a month ago, I decided to return to the world of freelance book editing. This was supposed to be a decision based entirely on finances. After all, I’d given up editing over ten years ago due to finances — as in: they were so robust, I was lucky enough to retire from the day job and focus on my fiction.
Yeah, I know. I’ve got four books on the market, not to mention a short story I released on my birthday, specifically because all I wanted for my birthday was book royalties (okay, fine. And iTunes gift cards, which, I’d like to point out, I never got). Why is a return to editing based entirely on finances?
Because, to be honest, it’s the only way I can justify spending a good chunk of my day on someone else’s book. I OUGHT to be sitting here all day long, writing and editing my own books. I have story ideas, novel ideas, a new Demo Tapes anthology to bring together… all sorts of projects.
I think that when I am more pressed for time, I tend to work more efficiently. Instead of wasting hours trying to keep up with my feed reader, Facebook, and Twitter, I’m focusing. I’ve got to get a certain number of pages a day edited, and then my time is my own. And somehow, Twitter and Facebook and all the rest don’t mean nearly as much as they did just a month ago.
There is something about working on someone else’s book that gets me excited about my own books. There’s a synergy that happens, an excitement as I comb through someone else’s words. I may not be consciously thinking of my own writing — after all, I’m getting paid to focus on someone else — but my subconscious has come alive in ways that I hadn’t realized I missed. I itch to write. I’d worried that itch was dead. Turns out, it just needed a bit of competition.
I’m glad of this competition for another reason, too. I can’t tell you how many books I’ve read, from all sorts of publishers, and how much blog fiction I’ve encountered that I’ve looked at and yearned to edit. I may have stopped doing the work all those years ago, but that doesn’t mean the compulsion to fix language ever left. By returning to the job, I’m hopeful I’ll get to work with some of those authors. Some of them really deserve to shine, but are being held back by simple errors.
This was a scary step to take. I even shut down my second-most-popular blog in order to head down this path. I told myself it was all about the finances, but the truth is that I’ve rediscovered a love that I probably never properly appreciated. I faced my fears about the work, and I’ve come out better for it. (So far. Ask me again in six months!)
Even if the answer six months from now changes, I wish you, fellow members of the #amwriting community, a clear path to your own passions and better writing. I wish you this energy, this excitement about all fiction, not only your own.
Susan Helene Gottfried, also known as Susan at West of Mars, is the author of four books, one e-book-only short story, and other short stories that appear in varying anthologies. Join the Trevolution at West of Mars
I was thinking of this while watching musicians jamming. They challenge even as they encourage. Writers enjoy that same artistic enthusiasm when they get out and play with other writers. This can show up in critique groups or public forums or it can be friendly competition among writing friends, but everyone benefits.
Exactly! And isn’t the idea to get the best out there for our respective audiences?