Ep. 194: Should You Hire an Editor Before Submitting Queries to Agents?

In this bonus episode, Rachael answers your questions, including: 

• Should you hire an editor before sending out agent queries? 
• What are some great memoirs and why should writers read them? 
• Do I need specialized tax help as a writer? 

Don’t miss Ines Johnson’s writer’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClivO7XAP2GCRRz-7Bm3Nhw

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing.

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 Transcript

Rachael Herron: Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:15] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #194 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. This is a mini-sode! This is brought to you by Patreon subscribers who get to ask me any questions that they want, and I get to answer them for the benefit of all of you. So it’s really kind of a cool system. So thank you to those Patreon supporters who are supporting me at the $5 and up level a month. And I’ve got a collection of some questions here, so let’s get to them. I actually have heard from a couple of you, I will just say in an aside, that you really like the mini episodes. It is possible that one of you, just tunes in for those and not for the interviews, which is kind of really nice. It means that you like listening to these answers from me. And I like having the time and the space and the ability to do so. So thanks for listening. Okay. Let’s jump in. 

[00:01:13] This is from May. Hello, May! She says, okay, I have another question. So I’m doing my first round of edits on my first novel. Still cannot believe I wrote a whole novel. Yes, you did. And I can’t help, but think about the next steps. I know I want to at least attempt getting an agent and do traditional publishing. Should I hire an editor to go over my manuscript before I start sending it out? Should I just polish it as much as I can and then send it? I know most publishers will have their own editor before publishing. How do I go from cleaned and polished draft to a draft that is ready for an agent to fall in love with?

[00:01:48] I’m so glad you asked this because I get asked this in every single class I teach, it comes up all the time. How do you know if this manuscript that you’ve spent so much time now revising and revising again, and then doing passes on and then doing cleanups on and then proofreading, and then maybe getting beta readers? Although VBR, very careful with that as I’ve spoken about in the past, be careful with who you ask to beta read any of your work. How do you know if it’s good enough to go out to agents yet? The simple answer is you don’t and that’s okay. The truth is agents know that the submissions they get are not perfect manuscripts, that’s just necessarily so. The most agents, I would say most agents I’ve ever met I know there are some who don’t do this, but most agents guys are willing to work with writers or want to write work with our writers on edits before taking them out and attempting to sell them to the traditional publishing world. My agent did that. And in fact, I was one of those people that her picking me up as a client was contingent upon my agreeing to do the edits that she suggested.

[00:03:09] Should you do that? Absolutely. You should do that if, and only if you agree with the changes that the agent wants you to make, if you don’t, if she’s trying to turn your book into a book that is not your book, then you run away and you don’t have to worry about this at all. But I loved the suggestions that Susanna gave me and I took them and we have been in business together for almost 13 years now. So that is absolutely fine. You can send out a not quite perfect manuscript to an agent. And when I say not quite perfect, it is as perfect as you can make it by yourself. You don’t look at it and say, this is not quite perfect. You look at it and you say, this is the best I can do. This is the best it’s ever going to be. The last sentence is a lie. It will be better because you will have editing. Feel free to send out at this stage, if you can’t figure out what else to do to make this book stronger, you’re ready to send it to agents. There is however, an optional route you can take, between your book being done, to the best of your ability and sending it to an agent, you can hire a developmental editor to make sure that your story structure, that your character arcs, that everything developed mental in the book is the best it can be.

[00:04:25] This is not the time you’d ever hire a copy editor. A copy editor is a much lower level of editor. And they’re just looking for typos and sentences that are confusing. The developmental editor is the one you’re really worried about. An agent understand that your work is going to have copy yet. It’s going to have errors in it because it hasn’t been copyedited yet. But choosing to hire a developmental editor to help you at that high 30,000-foot level, before you send to an agent, can be useful, especially if it’s a first book and you just can’t- can’t see, see the forest for the trees that are, you know, jammed in around you- kind of sticking you in the middle of this forest. That can be a really good way to go. It is however, not inexpensive. It is- it costs quite a bit of money to do that kind of edit and it doesn’t have to be done. Just let me make that very clear. It does not have to be done. If your book is as good as you can get it, send it out to agents and feel good about it. If you want your book to be a little bit better before you do that, hire an editor, where do you hire and developmental editor? I always recommend Reedsy.com (R E E D S Y.com) because all of their editors are vetted. Most of them come out of traditional publishing and I have had so many students and clients be absolutely thrilled with the edits that they have received from there.

[00:05:49] So that is what I suggest about that. Let me make sure I got all of your questions. You said, should I hire an editor to go over my manuscript before sending it out? Only you can make that decision there’s no should, there’s no should not. If you think your book needs to be stronger and you just can’t see how, yes, hire an editor. Yes, and then of course, when your agent sells your book to a traditional publisher, then you’ll get an editor and that editor will work with you on the actual big edits. So that always comes with any publisher that you’re ever going to sell a book to your editor will be assigned. You will probably meet your editor before you even sell your book to them, or at least meet them on the phone and talk about this kind of edits that they want. Again, they’re accepting your book. They’re buying your book from you, through your agent may be contingent upon you doing those edits that this editor wants you to do. And again, do it if you want to. Only do it if you want to. 

[00:06:53] But do keep an open mind, your book, which is so perfect right now, it can get a lot better. They always, always, always can with the help of outside editors. So, excellent, excellent question. Let’s see, Thoulma says. What are two or three of your all-time favorite memoirs from the craft slash execution point of view and why? What can aspiring writers learn from them?

[00:07:21] I absolutely love and this is going to sound so trite and clichéd but The Glass Castle. The Glass Castle had been pushed on me for so many years that I just, she wasn’t going to read it. You know, when you kind of get that knee jerk. Nah, I don’t want to kind of think the only reason I read The Glass Castle is because a student in a memoir class at Stanford, challenged me. I had been talking about story structure about the inciting incident, about the context shifting midpoint, about the dark moment, about all the things that go in between those things. And she challenged me and she said, I don’t think The Glass Castle follows that. So I read it over the weekend. That weekend and it follows it so perfectly, they’re not even approximately at the right areas. I brought in my book with post-its inciting incident was at 20%. The context shifting midpoint was like at 49.5%. Everything was perfect. And the book is so beautifully executed and so well written. I really, really love it. 

[00:08:26] Another one that I really love is called Priestdaddy it’s by Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy. The reason I love it is it is almost poetic in the way it is written. She is much looser at hitting those story structure elements. Although they’re in there, they’re just suggested like the fragrance of them and her writing is so incredibly strong and so funny and deep and poetic. I can recommend that one more to kind of show the elevated writing that can go with a very sturdy feet-on-the-ground piece of prose. And the third one I’d recommend is one that kind of, kind of shows the humor that can be found in memoir. I love Eve Schaub’s book, A Year of No Clutter. Year of No Clutter. It is basically her attempt to con Marie a room in her house, which is very large and basically held everything. And the book is about decluttering that room and it does not have the final ending that you would expect. She’s a really beautiful writer. She’s been on the show actually. You may want to go back and listen to that. And she just gets how to wrap her arms around, a project memoir or as many people call them a stunt memoir. When you give yourself a challenge and then write about it. So I would recommend those. You will not lose anything by reading those, you will in fact, learn so much and you’ll enjoy them.

[00:10:02] Let’s see, which book do you recommend for getting a good understanding of AA slash NA alcoholics anonymous and narcotics anonymous, and the process of addiction recovery. I’m researching the subject for my upcoming book. So for me, I would recommend, what we call the 12 and 12, which is the 12 steps and 12 traditions of AA. It’s a slim book, and it goes over all of the 12 steps that are in alcoholics anonymous. Don’t worry about the traditions part. You won’t need that, but the 12 steps at the b- the first half of that book really kind of break down how they work without having to go to what we called the big book, the big blue book of the book of alcoholics anonymous. It is hard to read it’s archaically written. It’s completely a product of the patriarchy. There are amazing things in it. This I know, however, is not the place that you want to be., if you just kind of want to get the understanding of recovery. 

[00:11:11] Let’s see. There’s another good book called Living Sober. That is, kind of little vignettes of day to day living. What else do I really like? Oh, I remember what I think you would probably like maybe pick up The Three Daily Meditation books for AA/NA, and Alanon, AA is just for today. AA is daily reflections and for Alanon, which is for people who are, who love people in recovery or in addiction is called the courage to change. And each one of those has a daily reading with usually a quote and a reflection and it kind of all three of those books really get into the heart of the matter of what it is to be in recovery from an addiction. And to almost, I kind of know a little bit about what you’re doing with your book that you’re writing. And let me just say, I cannot wait to read it. Let me know if you have any other questions about that. But those are books I would recommend right off the top of my head. We can go deeper if you want to just email me. 

[00:12:21] And then lastly, this is from Ines Johnson who is also on the show. She’s fantastic. Ines says, Hey Rachael! I have a question. What should a writer look for in a financial planner slash tax accountant? I took a look at my midyear income and hooray! it looks like I’m moving on up to a new tax bracket. Congratulations, Ines. The kind where I can’t TurboTax my filing anymore. I need a human person’s knowledge cause my smarts aren’t going to cut it any longer, but I don’t know what questions to ask a money person or what to look for any advice? Yes, I do have advise, so doing the taxes for a creative person, for a person running a creative business. It’s different from a lot of other businesses and tax accountants, financial planner, financial planners have to understand that not only are our jobs a little bit different and that we can write off different things depending on what job we’re in, but it really helps if they understand the creative process. So this is a blatant plug for my tax accountant, who I absolutely love with all my heart. Her name is Katie Reid. She will file your taxes from wherever you are in United States, you don’t have to be here. But the reason I love her is I just randomly Googled a tax preparation place when I got my first deal and I went to them and she happened to be the one doing my taxes. And let me explain this: Katie gets excited on February 1st of every year, the same way that we get excited when a book is released. She is so happy that tax season has opened. She knows everything about it. And I was her first writer. Or maybe her second writer, but I was really early in her collecting creatives to work with.

[00:14:18] And she leaped into that challenge to figure out what it was I needed. The other thing is, is that, Oh, I think for the first five or so years that I went to her, I didn’t have anything like on an Excels spreadsheet. I didn’t have anything written down. I had a shoe box of tax receipts, that I, or, you know, have receipts that I would bright and handwrite into a notebook, a spiral bound notebook, where I kept all of my money information. And I would literally photocopy pages in this handwritten spiral bound notebook. And Katie thought it was charming. She thought, it was just the best. And in fact, I used to be so excited to do my taxes with her. That for many years, I tried to get February 1st, her very first appointment so that we could get excited together. This was a little bit pre me being in the self-publishing world. In self-publishing world, I got in around 2011, 2012, and there are so many 10-99’s that come, and they come so late. Sometimes you’ll get your 10-99 mid-February or end of February, even though you’re supposed to have them by January 30th. That I just couldn’t keep doing that with Katie. Now I usually go see her in March or April. But what happened with Katie is that she left that agency. And she had a baby, started a family. And I went back to that agency a couple of times, couple years, hated who I worked with because they weren’t Katie. Stalked Katie, found her on Facebook and asked, can you please do my taxes for me? And she said, yes. And over the course of the last five or six, seven years, she has turned that request into basically a full time gig that she runs from her own home. 

[00:16:03] That’s my dog shaking in the background – and she allows us, me and a couple of friends to come to her house where she does her taxes, me and Sophie Littlefield and Juliette Blackwell every year, go to Katie’s house, we do our taxes together. So Katie takes each one of us into her office for about an hour each, sometimes less cause she’s so fast. And she does them in front of us while she’s talking about what sewing project she’s doing and about her kid or about our next book, she’s typing things in. She turns to us and said, well, your refund is this much or you owe this much to the IRS by the time we walk out and the person who is getting the biggest refund or who owes the least to the IRS pays for lunch, and then we all go out to lunch. But Katie’s actually done things like tax parties where the same thing happens.

[00:16:57] Somebody has a hot party in the house and everybody’s hanging out, having fun while one person at a time is getting their taxes done. She’s incredible. She has so many writers now in her stable, I would say dozens of writers in her stable. She really knows what she’s talking about. And I know that I’m selling a friend here and she has everything. One year Lala, my wife and I got hit with a $29,000 tax bill from the IRS. It was the year that, we were married legally in California, but the feds still didn’t see gay marriage as legal and it was this huge disconnect. There was literally one person at the IRS who understood gay taxes. Katie had to get him on the phone and explain the tax code and the tax law to him. I am not exaggerating. They went ahead and canceled that $29,000 tax bill because the IRS had done it wrong. And Katie had set them straight about their own rules. 

[00:17:51] So, where do you find this Katie? Katie, I hope you don’t mind that I’m announcing to the world where you can be found. But she is katie@done.tax. (K A T I E @ D O N E.tax) You can look her up at done.tax, that’s her, she’s phenomenal. I can’t recommend her highly enough. And also, Ines let’s just take a moment and step back and really luxuriate in the fact that you need this, that you need this help. I recommend getting this kind of help whenever you feel a little bit wobbly about your taxes, about your planning. I love having somebody that you know, right now it’s August as I record this, I can send. And I should do this probably this week or next. I’ll send her what I’ve made for the whole year and what I’ve put aside to pay for taxes. And she tells me whether it’s going to be enough. She helps me with my estimated taxes when I get around to paying them. She’s just on call and she’s fantastic. So let’s see. Oh, and Ines says, I’ve been posting on YouTube videos since we talked, because we were talking about her launching a YouTube video for writer’s channel, and she’s already up to 200 plus subscribers. So I will link to her YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClivO7XAP2GCRRz-7Bm3Nhw) in the show notes of this episode @HowDoYouWrite.net.

[00:19:14] Speaking of HowDoYouWrite.net, you should come over and you should leave comment. Also, I promised that I’d be keeping my eye on reviews since I asked for them. And there’s unknown review of over at iTunes for How Do You Write, and this one is from Giana Floyd. Hi, Giana. She says five stars! A must-listen. When I envisioned myself as a famous author someday, I make sure Rachael is my best friend. Oh my God I love this. I actually didn’t read it before I started reading it out loud. Her advice, vulnerability, and interviews have me checking my podcast app every Friday, sometimes before coffee. And if that statement doesn’t convince you that this podcast is a must listen, nothing will. Giana, you don’t have to wait until you’re a famous author to be my best friend. Let’s be best friends now. Plus, I’m not a famous author, I’m just a, an author with a lot of books and some readers. And I think that’s really what I love being. So thank you for this incredible, wonderful five-star review. Please go over to any of your podcasts, your apps, and leave a review or a star rating or something like that.

[00:20:21] It helps with discoverability and I really appreciate it too. And its fun to go look for them when I remember. So that clears out my backlog of questions. So if you are a Patreon subscriber at the $5 and up level, please lay some on me. You cannot give me too many questions. This is a mini, bonus episode, because when I get those questions, it’s a bonus episode. So please send them to me. I can’t wait to answer them. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for supporting and from the bottom of my heart, Thank you so much for writing. When you are writing, even when you’re thinking about writing, you are changing the world one word at a time. That is what we do as writers. So I wish you very happy writing and we’ll talk soon, my friend.

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.