The Who, What, Why

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And so, with the long, empty road ahead of me (and the Twilight soundtrack playing in the background), I wondered what I should be doing.

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I can remember the day I realized that I wanted to work in publishing. And I use the word “realized” intentionally, as it wasn’t so much of a decision as it was a realization that it's what I should have been doing all along.

I was on a road trip with my friend. We had booked a flight cross-country to San Francisco, had a return flight booked from Seattle and about ten days to make the drive. Nothing else was planned. Having lived together all four years of college, the two of us made for great travel companions: we enjoyed each other’s company, could tolerate each other in small spaces, and were comfortable sitting together in silence (thanks to hours spent studying together despite being in different majors).

We were somewhere along the Washington-Oregon border, on a long stretch of highway, when we fell into one of those silences. I was driving; on one side was blue skies and an expanse of land, on the other, the orange haze of distant wild fires somewhere beyond the horizon. It had been two years since I graduated college, and I was working in my field of study–multiple part-time jobs, but I was getting the experience, building my resume, and enjoying the work. Except it wasn’t what I thought it would be. Not the work, per se, but how I felt doing it. Somehow, it felt like I wasn’t doing what I was meant to be doing. And so, with the long, empty road ahead of me (and the Twilight soundtrack playing in the background), I wondered what I should be doing.

As I ran through the list of possibilities, my “Definitely Not” list kept growing while my list of “Definitely Maybes” remained mostly nonexistent. I don’t remember what specifically led to it, but when the thought finally struck me it felt so obvious, so certain. “Of course! Publishing.” I wanted to work in publishing!

My life was heavily influenced by my love of books and reading. Some of my earliest memories are of trips to the library and reading Possum Come A-Knockin’; friendships were forged at midnight book releases and reading marathons; and I admit I even took some fashion inspiration from bookish heroines. My childhood love of stories is what led me to pursue a degree in history and a career in history education, so I might share the countless, often-untold stories of people and events throughout history.

Yet despite all this, I had never actually considered working with books and writers. And now, that fact seemed so silly.

By the end of the road trip, I had resolved myself for a career change. I had worked as a beta reader for a few years and had received enough positive feedback to know that 1. I was providing way more than what a beta reader typically provides and charges for, and 2. I truly enjoyed helping writers make their stories the best they could be. So that’s what I decided I would do: I was going to help writers make their book dreams come true and get their books into the hands of readers. I was going to become an editor.

And so, the road trip came to an end and a very different journey began.

I had no idea how or where to get started. I didn’t know the first thing about the publishing industry other than “writers write books and someone sells them” and I am not a jump-right-in type of person. After some (i.e. a lot) of online searching I decided to enroll in the University of Chicago Editing Certificate program. My thinking being, “If anyone can teach me what it means to be an editor, it’s gonna be the inventor of Chicago Manual of Style.”

And I was right. The certificate program gave me a crash course in things I wouldn’t have even thought about, like coming up with a system for file names and formatting your Word tool bar so everything you need is in the Home tab; tricks of the trade, the different pathways of publishing, and (finally!) what the heck the difference is between proofreading and copy, line, and developmental editing.

But it also taught me that maybe, being an editor wasn’t exactly what I thought it was. I remember an instructor describing exactly what I wanted: a long standing relationship with a writer, helping them perfect their writing, supporting them through the plot-building process, and seeing them through multiple books. She then followed up with, “But that isn’t often the case. Sometimes the editor won’t even be in direct contact with the writer, instead communicating with an agent or publisher.”

Well that was a bummer–but I had already seen examples of editors forming relationships with their writers, so I figured it was a matter of personal preference, and perhaps the size of the company. So I kept with it, completed my certification, and began working freelance as a developmental editor. I was even fortunate enough to be contracted by a publisher where I could work directly with my writers, allowing me to form the relationships I hoped to form with the creators of the manuscripts I worked on.

Then, one day I found the podcast Fiction Writing Made Easy by Savannah Gilbo. I enjoyed the way she covered topics like genre cliches and scene development in a clear and concise way, and a few episodes in she called herself a Book Coach and explained what that meant.

It was another “aha” moment. This! This is exactly what I was looking to do! Helping writers on their writing journey? Being there to encourage them, to guide them through plot holes, and urge them onward when they feel stuck? This was what I wanted to do for writers. I wanted to be the support that I wish I had every time I tried to work on my own manuscripts. It was why I always offered writers additional phone calls and encouraged them to email me if they ever had questions or wanted a second opinion, even when I was just doing beta reads as a hobby. I didn’t want to just assist in the production of a book–I wanted to assist the writer.

So the journey continued onward.

Savannah’s podcast introduced me to Jennie Nash and Author Accelerator; I became a certified book coach through Jennie’s program, and now my journey isn’t only my own.  I join each of my writers, wherever they may be on their book-writing journey, as a companion in the passenger seat, ready to guide, support, and encourage through any obstacles and successes along the road.