MarZe’s Experience
Check your email.
Normally, this message in my Messenger’s inbox would
be cause for smiles as it would be a signal to watch
updates for events or promotion opportunities, but for
the last few months it’s been to alert me of impending
edits to one of two manuscripts that were in the works.
Here are a few things I’ve learned riding the learning
rollercoaster called Publishing.
Lesson One—Every set of eyes in the editing process
sees something altogether different than another.
One manuscript had gone through three editors and
five pairs of eyes (the author, the developmental editor,
and three more editors) and the last series of edits
could’ve made another newbie to the game sit in a corner
and suck her thumb while rocking back and forth.
Lesson Two—Thinking faster than you can type is
not beneficial to the process and can be extremely time
consuming when you have to make edits.
I dropped commas, I used more than a few words to
make a simple statement, and sometimes skipped words
in a sentence structure. Every reader may not have seen
this, but let a librarian read the story—I can hear the
blazing one-star review based on those things alone.
Lesson Three—Asking questions for clarification in a
timely fashion is always a good idea.
Lesson Four—pay attention to deadlines. As an
author, be conscious of deadlines as missing one can be
detrimental. My work was on the desk of an editor at
the time the last call for submissions came in. Somehow,
because that didn’t put a fire under me to light a flame
under the editor and ask where my story was in the
process. Well, that came back to bite me, not the editor,
in the ass. The project went to press thirty minutes
before the editor finally returned it. This required me to
do some major after submission work to get the errors
corrected. Mainly, having to do an errata spreadsheet that
will allow the printer/distributor to make corrections to
the anthology after it’s already in. I can’t tell you the kind
of headache that creates for everyone involved. All it
would have taken was diligence on my part. That’s it. I
will work to solve a problem until I can’t.
I love solving problems and I’m usually patient with
a good puzzle, but to say that Saying that I was totally
mystified by the spreadsheet I had needed to fix errors
made in the submission process for eBook formatting—
is an understatement.
The instructions were clear, and I’ve filled out
spreadsheets before so it shouldn’t have been complicated,
right? The wrongness of that thought caused me to
question my own intelligence. I didn’t ask any questions
because—
“I’ve got this.”
“It can’t be that freakin’ hard.”
“What am I missing?”
Questions I asked myself became repetitious and
frustrating. It wasn’t until my editor called me that I
stopped running on the proverbial hamster wheel.
“Why didn’t you call me?” she asked.
She couldn’t see me rolling my eyes, my shoulders
shrugging, and my head shaking, but I’m sure she heard
it all in my voice.
“ I thought I could figure it out,” I responded. “I believe I
can figure anything out until I can’t.”
The problem was explained and solved in one
conversation. I promise that hours frying my brain were
spent unnecessarily. If the resources are available, it
makes no sense to fumble through the process trying to
figure things out and waste time, resources, and money.
All in all, this ride into the publishing process has been
a fairly smooth one because I’m blessed to belong to a
tribe that wants me to be as successful as I desire to be.
The bumps in the editing and after publishing road didn’t
throw me off course, even if a few tears were shed. As
a matter of fact, I know this journey has brought me a
wealth of knowledge that I would’ve never gained had I
gone in another direction.
The lessons learned will be treasured and applied as
long as I fancy myself a writer and author.
NKLC Magazine | 29