Joanne E Sprott, Book Shepherd

I support your story's vision, one keystroke stroke at a time

Blog Archive

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Multi-Path Approach to Writing

Whether it’s shorter form essay or blog writing, or your first story masterpiece of hundreds of thousands of words, it can sometimes feel like climbing a really steep mountain (with no trail, mind you) to get from beginning to end.

I’ve found myself procrastinating on writing my blogs (I know, having more than one could be part of the problem . . .) regularly. Also a book I’m working on (about physics and metaphysics).

I was reminded recently that one of the beauties of having no path is that you then have lots of choices in how you go up that writing mountain. The only important thing is to be willing and focused enough to stay in the writing mode of activity. No fair substituting knitting (or Youtube videos) for writing (drat!).

Explore All the Options

Jean said that if I’m finding myself blocked about writing something, I should explore all the different ways I can be writing. I have plenty of unfinished projects, so it’s easy to see the options (copy for my tarot deck book, poems, blog posts on editing, a single chapter in my physics/metaphysics book, etc.). If I’m just not feeling bloggable, I can work a poem or write up the description and message for a tarot card. Somehow just telling me that makes it easier to get started on . . . something writing. Small bites are so much easier.

Take a Lesson from Other Writers

And Jean’s admonition to use just the discipline to keep writing something, also reminded me of another writing lesson I learned from a writer’s group I helped with last year: find your best writing ritual or context; what works for others may not work for you. We had several dedicated writers in the group who had invested a tidy sum in this coaching effort, but it was still difficult for them to stay focused on writing. The successful storytellers have found quite different ways to keep going. One stays connected to nature to stay motivated and writes almost every day. Another gets up and writes the same time every morning when others in the family are still asleep. A third found that she had to set aside retreat time away from home to get the words down; daily discipline didn’t work for her.

So, in the spirit of The Artist’s Way, but not necessarily every morning (set your own time pattern), write something. You’ll be done before you know it. And then you can email me to see about getting your masterpiece edited. 🙂

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Marketing Your Editorial Services

Yeah, I know too many of you have kind-of a “no” answer to that, at least in terms of any kind of plan. Many of my editing and design colleagues are introverts who would much rather deal with clients one at a time, do the work, and collect their fee than play the sales game. That’s supposed to be for those extroverted manipulators, salespeople.

Actually, this extrovert doesn’t like traditional advertising, or traditional sales with its focus on pressuring people to “close the deal.” I’ve certainly spent a lot of time agonizing about and also avoiding the “cold-call,” the “follow-up call,” any interaction that means interrupting an individual stranger.

Adopting Adaptibility

But ya know, if you are invisible, no one will be able to benefit from your talent and work ethic. Once you have experience, you may be able to rely on referrals for most of your business, but after my twenty-five years in business for myself, I’ve seen massive shifts in the publishing industry that have made my old clients “invisible” and have caused me to scramble like a newbie to find other sources for work.

And let’s face it, the employment picture is not that different from running your own business these days. Most jobs don’t last more than five or ten years, and then you have to “sell” your skills and talents again. So there’s really no escape from marketing.

Make Your Expertise Social

I think the key to successfully marketing a business in our age of information and digital connectivity is to find a marketing method niche that feels natural to you. There are actually many more ways to be visible than ever before, and that intimacy of interacting with individuals rather than simply broadcasting your wares through advertising is actually “in,” especially in social media. Just by joining some LinkedIn groups and asking/answering questions, you can subtly present yourself as the expert you are and actually find clients. Remember that you don’t have to belong to every social network to be successful. Find two or three you will really use (and Facebook does not have to be one of them) and you’ll be fine.

It’s not that bad, really!

Paper as Refreshing Contact

And there’s still a place for direct paper contact. I got in the habit several years ago of sending postcard once a year to established and prospective publishing clients, and with everyone so inundated with email and other digital communications, a physical postcard—in_the_mail(!) can be quite refreshing and may stand out from other communications. Ironic after all these years of having your letters and resumes lost in piles, but there it is.

It’s the Relationship

It’s all about interacting one-on-one, not just broadcasting, which should be more palatable to you introverts. A client of mine, a very successful business negotiator, said that the most important thing to remember when dealing with potential clients is to focus on asking questions about them, rather than focusing on blurting out all the stuff you can do. By asking questions first, you can see whether and how your talents match with their needs. Really! Have a conversation. 🙂 You might want to initiate that conversation in different ways regularly, though, along with making yourself visible through a website and social media.

Can you pledge at least once a week to participate in an online or offline conversation that includes potential clients or folks who can refer work to you? Let me know in the comments what your best practices are.

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Finding Your Client Match

I had a project recently where I totally miscalculated my suitability to the client’s needs. I lost money because of it because I had to spend way too much time dealing with the client mismatch itself.

There’s the scope fog for the job itself (conflicting scopes from different client representatives), and then there’s scope creep because of queries from me or long conversations on the phone to clarify what the client really needs.

Setting Boundaries

These client-match issues cause more trouble and eat up more time than any other project issue. I do set some boundaries on projects based on their content (don’t give me literary criticism books to index or doctorate-level engineering tomes—I will refer you!), but it can be harder to gauge how well I will “get along” with the client. And since that assessment can cost me, I need better tools to figure this out ahead of time.

Asking Questions to Understand the Client

Cue Chris Lema. Several years ago, I decided to keep this little gem from one of his daily blog posts, tucked it into a digital note, and forgot about it (stupid me!). I rediscovered it during a purge of my notes list and now it’s time to 1) integrate it into my practice and 2) customize it to my business. Chris’s original business was website design and functionality (if I remember correctly), so let’s start with his questions and then we can see how to apply them to my publishing services biz. Chris asked

—Do you feel comfortable talking about your budget?
—Do you understand that you can’t match your competitor’s site without matching their spend?
—What have you tried already?
—Are you prepared to help get things done?
—Do you work well with timelines and accountability?
—Can you articulate what success will look like?
—Are you the decision maker?
—Are your expectations realistic?
—What do you know about me?

Great questions for Chris’s clients when he’s talking with them about working together. I looked at his questions and realized that most of the time, I don’t ask hardly any of them to the authors I work with. Hmm. I got used to working with a handful of publishers whose needs and methods I got to know over time, so I could expect consistency. I stopped asking questions. But that was in the 1990s.

Since then, the publishing world has obviously changed just a bit (!). I deal much more with individual writers or individual scholarly authors these days. Schedules are much more unpredictable, and more of these folks don’t know the difference between developmental editing and copy editing and proofreading. And that’s OK. I’m the one who needs to ask the right questions for my purposes, as well as listening to theirs.

So, today, I stand committed to asking the following questions of new clients to create a better chance for a good match:

—What’s your book about?
—What are you looking to have me help you with?
—Interesting. May I see a sample chapter?
—What editing work have you done on your book so far?
—May I see a sample from the middle of your manuscript?
—What do you see as your role in the my editing/proofing/design process?
—What budget did you have set up for this part of your writing process
—What kind of turnaround time do you need for me to successfully support you?

So, there we are. Now to implement this set of questions with every.single.client.

How about you?

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When NOT to Edit Your Manuscript

. . . And when to begin and/or enlist a professional editor. I read a great book several years ago, The INFJ Writer by Lauren Sapala. I think it’s good reading for all writers, regardless of their Myers-Briggs score, although those with an “N” in their score (for “intuitive) will more likely have a writing process and issues similar to the ones discussed in the book.

Self-Editing as Cop-out

The issue that struck me as an editor was Sapala’s plea to NOT fall into the trap of self-editing a section of your book when you get stuck. It does sound like a bit of a cop-out: stopping the actual progression of the story (fiction or nonfiction) and thinking that editing/refining what you’ve already written will substitute for moving on.

I know there are writers who successfully write and edit as they go. If this works for you to get you to the finish line, all good. I get the impression, though, that a lot of writers do use editing to avoid moving on. I know I have that sense of wanting things to be perfect as I go, but I’m an editor! There’s a lot of wisdom in Sapala’s advice to writers to keep going to the end of your rough draft before editing.

The Developmental Editor’s View

Also, I’ve found that it more efficient to give a developmental editor a complete draft of a story to do a manuscript evaluation. I’ve evaluated both fully written drafts and drafts in pieces with some connective description as to what will fill the gaps, but I think my service is best used for a complete draft. With a partial manuscript, I do feel like I’m not able to give a complete idea of the value of the plot all the way through. Saves money for the writer in the long run, too.

So, from both me and Lauren Sapala: Keep writing through to the end of your rough draft!

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It’s the Experience, Really!

Steve Jobs was right on this point. Give the customer an experience, not just a product. And that applies to those of us providing freelance services in the publishing industry (yes, it does!).

I see the customer experience as being 50% product quality, 50% customer service. In the end, my job is to service the customer experience.

Product Quality

I’ll start with the most obvious half of that experience. It’s comparable to the “experience” section of a resume if you were looking to be an employee. And for employees, unless they are customer service representatives, this is more than half of what they provide.

What does your product quality consist of? Here are the product quality benefits I bring to a client; try these on for size:

  • Expert skill level—Due to experience, but also dedication to improving that skill level, plus talent. Don’t discount talent. We are good at certain things and not so good at other things. I do have some natural talent for editing, proofreading, book indexing. Where are your talents as well as your experience?
  • Commitment to quality—The attitude quotient. Product quality is directly proportional to your attitude about building the product. You can be talented at building your product, but do you actually like to do that? I hope so!

That’s it, really. That’s your relationship to the product. I think most folks put too much emphasis on these two bullets and forget about (or are afraid of) the other half of the customer’s experience—service. And, no, this is not because we are in a “service” business. Your product happens to be considered a service. This is about all those things you should still be getting paid for that are normally called “customer service.”

Customer Service

I always took this part for granted, thinking it was primarily the quality of my product that created my reputation, but after working just the customer service side for my husband’s custom jewelry business (2010 to 2014), I’ve definitely given more attention to this aspect of my own business.

With my freelance editorial work, feedback on the customer experience is harder to come by (Testimonials are great: ask for them!). But with hubby’s coin rings as a physical product in an retail outlet, I began to see how important customer service was for custom buyers. We were automatically focused on the customer’s needs because so many of hubby’s rings were for important events like weddings or to commemorate ancestry, birth years, etc.

After this retail customer experience, I began to look at my editorial service business differently. I realized that most of my repeat business was due to client relationships cultivated over a number of years in most cases, but also with one-off projects. And most of that service was about assuaging customer anxieties about getting what they wanted and managing expectations.

What are your customer service goodies? Mine include:

  • A friendly and professional attitude with a can-do spirit
  • Transparency and accuracy about cost and time estimates with appropriate flexibility that’s fair to both me and the client
  • Responsiveness in communication (This doesn’t mean being a slave to email, but I do respond in 24 hours or less whenever possible)
  • Expanded availability due to having access to other professional colleagues for referrals (allows me to say “yes” most of the time)
  • Meeting my deadlines and if there is a snag, giving notice ahead of time if at all possible
  • Willingness to listen to the client’s needs but also the ability to set professional standards and give advice when required to avoid unrealistic expectations

And this, my friends, is the key to the happy dance and that five-star rating for you and your customer—managing expectations through great customer service.

Go give them a great experience!

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Revealing Your Genius: The Manuscript Evaluation

I’ve worked with self-publishing authors for several years now. They often live in an isolated writing world without that traditional publisher to guide them along. They might send their finished manuscript out to friends to “evaluate” but otherwise aren’t sure if their story is a good read.

The Purpose

When I work with a self-publishing author, I begin by proposing a manuscript evaluation, which is the first step in developmental editing. This first pass gives the writer an overall idea of whether or not their story line and characters (for fiction) or topic organization and narrative (nonfiction) actually hold the reader’s interest.

The Process Compared to Copy Editing

Instead of going into sentence detail to focus on grammar and other writing mechanics, I keep my mind on reading for content and story progression. For fiction, I track characters and look for lapses in how the writer describes them and makes them behave. I also track the plot sequence to see if there’s anything that doesn’t make sense as I go along. And finally, I just get a feel for how the whole thing works (or doesn’t) for a reader. Fiction or nonfiction, I want to remain curious but not confused. There can be mystery, but the writer needs to create it consciously. Let me step fully into your story and go along for the ride (or the flight)!

The Joy of the ME

I find manuscript evaluation to be extremely satisfying work. I have my own creative writing (mostly poetic in form—keeps me from rambling), but I love being able to contribute in this way to another writer’s creation. It’s like watching a flower bloom or a child discover her own drawing skill.

I also enjoy the more mechanical aspects of copy editing and proofreading, but this work of supporting stories is just goosebumps to the extreme.

PS: Let me know when I can help you meet your geni(e)us. 🙂

© 2011 – 2024 Joanne E Sprott, Intuitive Coach