Putting My Editorial Hat On: So, What Do I DO All Day?

I talk a lot on this blog about my author-life. Unsurprisingly! This is my writing blog. But, as some of you know, I lead a double existence. I have infiltrated the world of publishing, and I spend my days working as an editorial graduate trainee (which is sort of like an editorial assistant, but less so) for Orion Children's Books.

Apparently, this sort of thing is quite common. In fact, next month, as part of the SCBWI's Professionals series, I am joining the exceptionally talented Non Pratt and Phil Earle, two other authors who have secret publisher identities (or publishers who have secret writer identities, depending on how you want to look at it), on a panel about what it's like to see both sides of the industry. You should come! It'll be great.

This has made me think about my day job. Specifically: what do I DO all day? Whenever people ask me, I go a bit blank. I know I'm busy. When I think about my working day, I have a strong impression of busy-ness. But how, exactly, do I spend my time? What do I do before I come home, put on my mask and cape and write crime?

Well, it goes a bit like this ...
 

1. I Help Make Books

(Before we start, I've got to explain that what follows is just a very simplified norm. All of our books are different, and most don't happen exactly like this. Also, I've slightly fudged the order these steps go in, so that it's slightly less confusing. That said, onwards!)

Imagine that the editorial department have just bought a new book. Also imagine, for the sake of this post, that this book is the first in a new illustrated series for 7-9 year olds. (I also do a lot of work on YA books for our Indigo list, as well as our Early Readers for younger kids, and Asterix, which we have the licence to publish in the UK, but just go with me here.)

Now, there's a whole process to go through before an editor can buy a book. But this isn't something that I get involved with. As an editorial graduate trainee, I'll read new submissions as they come in from agents (more on this later), but I don't have the power to commission a book and I'm not involved in the buying process. I also don't help to negotiate terms when an offer is made - again, this is between the commissioning editor and the author's agent. The first time I'll come into contact with a new acquisition is once we've already bought it. I might help enter the terms of the agreed contract onto our system, or check the contract once it comes back from our legal department. I also help the editor fill out initial information forms for our sales, marketing and publicity teams, so they know what kind of thing they're going to be selling.

So we've got a new book! And now the real work begins. The editor will work with the author to reshape the book's story and characters, sometimes quite drastically. Again, though, this isn't something that I'm really involved in. I am not an editor, and so I absolutely do not structurally edit our books. The editor may ask me to read a draft, and give my comments on parts I think might not be working, but the final decision on what to go back to the author with will always be theirs. What I'm doing, while this is going on, is ... admin. I'll send out copies of the finalised contract to the author's agent for signing. As soon as the editor is happy with the state of the manuscript, I'll work to get the author's advance payment signed off. And so on! A lot of my job, you may not be surprised to discover, involves photocopying and/or scanning.

Once the book's text has been finalised, I may be asked to copyedit or proofread the manuscript. This still doesn't mean that I have the power to change anything major. A copyeditor looks for continuity errors (if Portia has green eyes on page 4 and red eyes on page 20, for example), factual errors (if the capital of England is Paris), missing words (like a sentence that reads 'I've got a lovely bunch of.') or missing punctuation (like a sentence that reads 'please dont say that she said sadly'). Proofreading is similar, but generally without the continuity or fact checking element - essentially, as a proofreader you're hoping that the copyeditor who went before you has already spotted these things, leaving you to catch tiny errors like dropped quotation marks and full stops.

OK, so we've got a great manuscript. Now we need some illustrations. The editor will usually have a very clear idea of the way they want these illustrations to look. Sometimes they'll already have an illustrator in mind, but sometimes I'll be asked to go and do some research. Then I take my suggestions to the editor, and they make the final decision about who to offer the gig to. Once an illustrator's been chosen, the editor may also ask me to help draft the artwork brief - to work out how many illustrations we want, of what size, and exactly what we want the illustrator to draw. Once the illustrator has submitted a first round of rough illustrations, I'll be asked to check that they've met the brief, and that what they've drawn matches what's described in the text (for example, if Mrs Tiggywinkle is a hedgehog in the text but a pig in the illustrations, we have a problem). The editor and the author will then have a look too, give their suggestions, and we'll go back to the artist with corrections. When we get final drawings, I'll check them one more time, as will the editor and author, and then the editor will sign off on them. And I'll have another invoice to process!

What we need now is a cover. Sometimes the illustrator will do the cover as well, although it's usually done by our art department. However it happens, though, it's the editor's job to come up with a cover design brief for the artist to use, and this is something else that I get to help with. Sometimes they'll come up with an idea and ask me to draft the brief, sometimes they'll ask me to research covers or cover directions. As always, the final decision isn't up to me - but often I get to make suggestions, and that's pretty cool.

Now we need to create the cover copy - the blurb on the back that tells readers what the book's about. I'm often asked to draft copy for editors, and it's one of my favourite parts of my job. I also help to draft copy for the in-house information forms we use for meetings and the out-of-house information that can be seen on Amazon and is sent to booksellers ... basically, I spend a lot of time helping the editors to fill in forms. Thank goodness I like to write.

Meanwhile, the manuscript and illustrations have been sent up to our production team to be turned into a book-shaped thing. We're sent the PDF back for checking (sometimes I'll help send this out to the author for final edits, although it's the editor who'll be in charge of noting down and adding in any corrections the author requests), and then once we've been through three rounds of checks, the files are sent away to the printers' to be turned into an actual book. When the finished book comes in, I'll send out copies to the author and their agent, and the illustrator and their agent.

And then the whole process starts again!


2. I Help Make Ebooks

So, that's the physical side of publishing. But I also work on the digital side of things. Interestingly, the children's ebook market is still very small - mainly because most kids don't have Kindles or iPads, and also because until recently colour ebooks tended to look ... not great. But now the technology's really beginning to be able to do what we need it to, and more and more kids are getting e-readers, and so I suspect that in the next few years things are going to really start to take off.

Anyway, ebooks. We are lucky in that we have an excellent digital team who (along with out-of-house designers) do the difficult work of actually creating the files. The first time I come across them is when I'm sent an ebook to check. I go through the book, making sure that the images and words are all there, that it looks good and handles well (this is actually really important - we're constantly using new programmes, in new ways, to create our ebooks, and so it's quite usual to come across an odd little glitch that hasn't happened before).

I love being involved with the ebook process, because everyone's working right at the edge of what's possible, constantly pushing to make things better, and that's amazing to be a part of. It proves to me that publishing really is keeping up with change in a very positive way, and I'm proud to be helping that happen. We've just been working on the ebook for Marcus Sedgwick's She Is Not Invisible, to make sure that its text-to-speech function makes it fully accessible to blind and partially sighted users. In fact, all of our ebooks are now being created with the text-to-speech function - which means that we're suddenly able to make our books available to a group of people that we could never have reached before, unless we decided to publish a separate braille edition. I think that's just brilliant.


3. I Help Find Books

I mentioned the submissions process before. Actually, I could (and probably will, one day) write an entire blog post about submissions - after all, I now have intimate personal knowledge of from both sides. I have been on submission, and I also come in to work every day to an inbox stuffed with other people's. Which is slightly bizarre!

When people imagine what editorial work is, they assume that we all just sit around all day reading books. When I hear this, I laugh a silent and bitter laugh, because I am the most junior person in our department, and I therefore have the least responsibility and the least work, and I still can only dream of a world where I would have time to read all the submissions we get in during the normal 9:30-5:30 working day. Editorial staff don't read submissions all day. We read submissions all evening, and all weekend, and all commute. When authors wonder why it's taking so long for an editor to get to their submitted book, it's because of this. We read as fast as we can, and the editors look at everything that is submitted, but editors are not super-beings, and so sometimes it has to take a long time.

Just to clarify, I don't get to make the final call on anything that comes in to the department. It's part of my job to take a look at submissions and feed back to the editors about them. They will then look at the manuscript themselves, and they make the final decision on whether or not they want to make an offer. Often, for various reasons, the submissions that come in just aren't right for our list. But sometimes there's something that totally clicks, and that's the greatest buzz feeling in the world. It's this heart-beating, panicky, acquisitive excitement that's a bit like an inanimate version of falling in love.

Of course, because I'm so junior, once I've found something it's all totally out of my hands. The most I can do is tell the editors how I feel, and then wait to see what they do. Will they agree with me? Will they decide they want it? If they want it, will we get it? I've heard an editor I know describing the process as a bit like gambling, and I think that's an amazing analogy. Publishing might seem kind of calm and staid, but there are moments where it's definitely a high-stakes business.

***

So, that's my job! Of course, I also do a lot of other things - essentially, I am there to help the editors in any way they need, from getting cakes and coffee for author meetings, to scanning in a book, to filling in submissions information, to researching a potential author ... and so on! I never know exactly what each day is going to look like, and I love that element of uncertainty. Publishing is a wonderful industry to be part of, and (from what I've seen of it so far) it just gets more interesting the more senior you get. I get to work with a lot of awesome people, and I know that I'm very lucky!

One final word: I love being part of an editorial team, but I hope I've made it as clear as can be that I'm extremely junior, and there are still a lot of things I don't know. So if I've made an error in this post, that's my personal mistake and I take full responsibility for it.

Oh, and if you want to find out more ... come along to the SCBWI panel on the 5th of November!

Autumn update: on Allsorts, copyedits, research and my first ever author panel!

Happy September all!

First, some nice author news. The lovely people at Author Allsorts have invited me to join their team (gang? crew?), and so I am now officially An Allsort. Watson even features on their mascot page!

This means that from now on I will also be popping up over on their blog from time to time. Look out for me there!

And, if you want to see me in the actual flesh, you CAN: on November 5th, I will be doing my very first panel, for the SCBWI, as part of their Professional Series. I will be talking with the amazing Non Pratt (by coincidence also an Allsort) and various other excellent people about what it's like to be publishers by day and writers by night (spoiler: quite exhausting but entirely wonderful).

So come along! I will be imparting many words of wisdom (such as: I still can't spell 'submissions' even though they make up about half of my job, and, er - more will come to me in time) and we can all go to the pub afterwards in celebration.

Now, book stuff!

For those of you following the progress of Murder Most Unladylike as it gallops towards bookhood, an exciting update: my last round of edits turns out to have been my last. The plot holes are filled, the timetable clashes have been resolved and the manuscript has been officially handed over to the copy editor.

This is marvelous, and terrible, and terrifying, because it means that the book is essentially done. I can't turn to people any more and say, "Don't worry, it's going to get MUCH better before you read it!" and I don't get to just keep tinkering about with it endlessly.

This is a bit hard to get my head around, because what I've discovered during the all the revisions I've done on this book is how much I LOVE editing. First drafts, for me, are things that have to happen so I can get to the good bit. I know how to make them go more easily (planning), and why they drag when they do (because I haven't planned), but a first draft for me always feels - thin. The characters don't seem as rich as they are in my head, there are sub-plots that I have to leave hanging and the whole world just isn't down on the page yet. But at the editing stage I can take my plodding first draft and start to really play with it.

More and more, I'm seeing the books I write as patterns. They aren't things, rocks that fall out of the sky into my head, they're lots of little strands that I can mix up and weave together any way I want. I can do anything with my story, and that's what the editing process is all about. You take your ideas, and the ideas of your readers, or your agent, or your editor, and spin them together into a newer, better version of your first draft. To me, it feels a bit like advanced-level magic. ABRACADABRA! Now your characters are on a boat! SHAZAM! Now they're speaking French! CRASH! Now they're all women! BANG! Now you've introduced a giant talking ocelot into the middle of a formal dinner party! BOOM! Now everyone's dead!

Rest assured, there are no talking ocelots in Murder Most Unladylike. But it's nice to know that there could be, if I decided that I wanted to. Or at least, there could have been before that final edit. The end of the editing process is the moment when a writer finally has to relinquish control of their pet world, and that's a weird feeling. I can't play with my story any more. I have to hand it over to the copy editor, and then the proofreader, and finally to you. And I miss it!

Which is why I've started to think about writing Book 2.

Yes, I'm back in Hazel and Daisy's world already. I have a title (not that I'm telling you lot what it is yet) and, more importantly, I have a murder weapon. This time around I shall be bumping off my luckless victim with arsenic, and that means that I am currently doing a lot of slightly disturbing research into poisons. So, if you've noticed my Goodreads lately (as one friend did, and messaged me in alarm), be not afraid - I'm just preparing to kill fictional people again.

(c) buildingbuttercream.blogspot.co.uk

In the process, I'm learning many fascinating things. For example, I've finally understood, after YEARS of confusion, exactly why you're not supposed to eat green cake in Peter Pan. 

It's because, in the 19th century, bright green (also known as Scheele's green) was made by using ARSENIC. It was put into everything - household goods, toys, clothes and food - because it looked so pretty. But, by the time J. M. Barrie was writing, the public had caught on to its potentially lethal side effects. They had learnt that green things were dangerous, and so they would have instinctively understood why you should never eat green cake - because it was very likely crammed with arsenic. And that's why the Lost Boys get told not to eat green cake. Because it's POISONOUS.

Isn't that interesting? I do love research. My favourite book at the moment is The Arsenic Century by James C. Whorton - basically, it's an amazingly detailed and very interesting guide to everything about arsenic in the 19th century. I'm about half way through, and I have no idea how any Victorian managed to actually stay alive. Arsenic was literally everywhere (and I mean literally ... literally. You could not MOVE without running into some). Look out for an upcoming geeky blogpost about historical poisonings - but for now, I'm going back to my reading. I've got a new book to write!

On Writing: How To Edit With Extreme Prejudice

Get out your red pens.

If I hadn't known it before, the last month or so would have proved to me that writing and publishing are two very complimentary lines of work.

Let me explain. At the moment, a large part of my job involves looking at early drafts of manuscripts, most of them by fairly new and inexperienced writers. What I'm noticing is how often, even if the writing is incredible, I feel unsatisfied by the pacing or the construction of the plot. I cannot even count the number of times I have said things like: 'Great idea, but the plot is baggy.' 'Could this be cut?' 'The plot drags.' 'This is so confusing!'

This interests me because, as you (maybe) know, I've just completed a huge structural edit on my crime novel. During this I sliced the wordcount down mercilessly from 85,000 words to just under 60,000, largely by simplifying its plot. I just cannot express how much better the book is because of this. Those 25,000 words of faffy explanation did not need to be there. They were just hanging out, clogging up the plot like leaves in a drain. But, as a lonely first-time writer, I had no idea - not only that I needed to get rid of them, but that I could get rid of them.

And it's not just me. When I read those manuscripts by other writers with my editorial eye I can usually see the great story struggling to get out from under all that dead wood - but I'm not sure I'd fully understand why this was such a common problem if I didn't have experience of doing it (and getting called out for it) in my own writing. So what did I do that was so problematic, and what are those other writers doing? Well, (and I know this is going to sound completely counter-intuitive) we believed our own stories.

You are crazy! I hear you say. Writers need to believe in what they write! And that's very broadly true. You are never going to be able to convince readers of the essential reality of your characters and the situations they find themselves in if you don't have at least a bit of your brain that thinks of them as totally real. Actually, sometimes I try to remind myself that Hazel and Daisy are completely non-existant fictional beings who have no life outside my brain, and the notion is so impossible and alarming that I have to stop thinking about it.

So that's the important and good side of belief. But there's a much more problematic aspect too. Because you are so emotionally invested in your characters as people, it's very easy to forget that you made up everything about them. You decided what colour their hair is. You decided how many brothers and sisters they have, whether their parents are dead, what their favourite food is and whether they prefer cats or dogs. That was you, and because you did that, you are also completely free to dye their hair purple, send their parents to Cambodia and give them a pet snake called Herbert. You can do that. In fact, their entire world is yours, and if something's wrong with it you are allowed to wipe the slate clean and start again.

In short, you do not need to keep anything in your story that is not working for your plot.

And that is the huge, enormous truth that all writers need to learn. My personal plot problem was this: I had made up this enormously convoluted backstory as to why the murder happened. It involved about five characters and resembled a really unfunny bedroom farce. I built it up piecemeal because of the requirements of various scenes - and every time I added a detail, it became The Truth for my story. Instead of questioning the validity of previous flights of fancy, I was buying into the nonsense created by my own past self. The whole monumentally dreaful thing was there because it was there because it was there because it was true.

What I forgot, of course, was that it was only true because I made it up one Tuesday afternoon while I was chopping up carrots for dinner, and therefore I was perfectly free to delete it and start again from scratch. It took my excellent agent turning to me at our first ever meeting and asking, "But does that character need to be part of this backstory? Because I couldn't really work out why she was there, and I think that if she wasn't things would be a lot more simple..." for the light switch in my brain to flick on. The scales fell from my eyes and I realised that there was NO EARTHLY REASON why that character was part of that plot. In fact, there was no reason why I couldn't entirely excise her from my novel. No one and nothing had to be there, because what I'd written was NOT REAL. I'd made it up!

So, to cut a long story short, I went back and took out that major character, as well as about five minor ones, and suddenly my novel worked. It made sense, the plot bounced along, the remaining characters had room to breathe.

See?

What this experience has taught me is that, as a writer, I need to ask myself the hard questions. Is that character necessary? Why is that scene there? Does that plot twist make sense? If not - well, they don't deserve to be there. A pointless scene, or character, or layer of subplot is bad, because it is messing up the rest of my story.

And what my publishing job has taught me is that it's not just my issue. Almost every author of every submission that I read could benefit from this advice, to some extent. Writers: I get that you love your creations, because I love my stories and my characters to an embarrassing degree. But as soon as you start to question yourself, you begin to make things simpler. The story flows faster. It makes more sense. It's better.

Because (and here's another important truth) you do not have to come up with the most complex plot in the history of forever to write something awesome. In fact, the opposite is the case. It's the really simple ideas that become the best stories.

Am I still making this mistake? Of course, to some extent. Belief is a really hard thing to cure yourself of. But just knowing that I do it, and that it's problematic, has helped me enormously as a writer - and knowing that other writers do it too is helping me enormously as an editor.

So, my advice to other rookie writers is this: ask yourself the hard questions. And once you've asked them, don't be afraid to act on the answers you give. In short, be mean to your creations. Believe me, they'll be so much better afterwards.