This week, I have the pleasure of talking with Beth Jusino, a writer, editor, teacher, and former literary agent.
Music: Harlequin by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3858-harlequin
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Show Notes:
Find Beth on Twitter and Instagram as @bethjusino, or on her website: www.bethjusino.com
Beth’s books: Walking to the End of the World: A Thousand Miles on the Camino de Santiago and The Author’s Guide to Marketing
Kathryn Stockett, The Help
Mountaineers Books
Chicago Manual of Style
The Editorial Department
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King
Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story
Tiffany Yates Martin, Intuitive Editing
Transcript:
Ariel: Hi there, and welcome to Edit Your Darlings, a podcast that tries to take the sting out of editing by talking with darling authors about their experiences. Ariel: This week I have the pleasure of talking with Beth Jusino, a writer, editor, teacher and unlikely hiker. She's the author of the travel memoir Walking to the End of the World: A Thousand Miles on the Camino de Santiago about her three-month walk across Europe on 1000-year-old trail, as well as the writers’ resource The Author's Guide to Marketing. Both books won medals from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. And she's also ghost-written and collaborated on half a dozen additional titles for a variety of authors and publishers. She says books are her day job as well as her creative outlet. She's been an in-house editor, a literary agent, and a marketing director, and has spent the past decade as a publishing consultant for both traditional and self-publishing authors. Beth is a member of the Authors Guild and the Northwest Editors Guild, where I met her. And she's spoken at writers conferences and book festivals around the world. Thank you so much for making time to talk with me, Beth.
Beth: It is great to be here. Thanks so much for the invitation.
Ariel: So let's dive straight into the questions. I read The Author's Guide to Marketing, and you talk a few different times about the importance of editing. An excerpt that really stood out to me was when you said, “Publishers are not in the business of finding ugly ducklings and then financially supporting their makeovers into swans. [...] publishers can only afford to use their editorial teams to fine tune and polish a manuscript, not to overhaul it.” Can you talk a little bit more about that? How does an author know when their book is finished maturing into a swan? And what sort of help might they need to get there?
Beth: I love that question. And I love the idea that a book might at some point be fully grown and fully developed. It’s an interesting thing to think about. Because I think my answer is, at some level, as a writer, you don't ever know that your book is done, because as writers, very rarely do we think of our books as done. The way that I like to think about it is that as a writer, my job is to do the work to get my book as far as I possibly can, using all of the resources of learning, both craft and audience, you know, constantly revising, constantly pushing back. Probably one of the hardest things I see as an editor is writers who get very excited about a first draft and believe that they're done as soon as they type “the end.” None of us—our first drafts or our final draft—none of us get everything polished and perfect on the first round. One of my favorite stories is... that I read a few years ago now actually, is Kathryn Stockett, the author of the novel The Help, which came out and was almost immediately picked up by Oprah and has become a movie since then. And was just, it was a really big book when it came out. And it was a debut book from a first-time novelist. And she wrote an article shortly after that book was published that talked about how she had spent years submitting it to agents. She had something like 70 rejections from literary agents. That's a challenge. But what I love about her story is that she talked about how she kept revising even as she was getting those no-thank-yous. So the draft, she would keep going back to the book and say, Okay, what can we change? What can we make better. And the draft that was eventually picked up and published and very popular was not the first draft that she thought that she was done with. So writing is a constant process.
Ariel: Yeah.
Beth: Being a writer, what we do is, you know, take it as far as you can on your own, learn everything you can, invest in the resources that are available, and then start talking to other people about it. And that might be critique groups, other writers who you're sharing your work with as they're sharing their work with you. That might be beta readers, people who are not professional editors, but are well-versed in the genre that you are writing to get their feedback. And maybe it is hiring freelance editors, developmental editors to give you a manuscript critique and look at that book from a big picture. And from the perspective of someone else. I think it's really hard for us to see our own work from an outside perspective. The trick to... to making a book that readers are excited about seeing is to see our own stories through someone else's eyes.
Ariel: You said that you worked with a freelance copy editor or proofreader but not a developmental editor?
Beth: I have two books that are out. One, The Author's Guide to Marketing came out in 2014 and is a... I independently published that, I self-published. And it was the work of... it is basically my day job work. I had been talking to and coaching writers in how to market and promote their... their... themselves, build their platforms, share their books, for a long time. And I've been teaching classes in front of people for a long time. So I had a really clear idea of what the structure of the... that particular nonfiction book that I wanted to share was going to be. In that particular case, I definitely still sought out beta readers. I had probably 10 to 12 other writers who were published and people in the industry read the book and give me feedback, and then made adjustments based on that. And then I hired a copy editor to go through and work with me on grammar, consistency, accuracy type issues. Now, for my second book, for Walking to the End of the World, that's a travel memoir, that is a narrative, and it's much more personal. And so for... in that case, I had beta readers at the beginning, people interested to give me feedback. And then I was working with the publisher. I had a contract with the publisher, Mountaineers Books. And so I worked with a developmental editor that they assigned to me once that book was turned in. Our challenge in that book was largely to trim it back. I had gotten really wordy. I turned in a manuscript that was longer than they asked for. And so my developmental editor and I spent a lot of time saying, Is this necessary? Does this anecdote repeat a theme, or repeat an idea that is already there? One of the great questions she taught me to ask was, what does this offer that is new? And it's something I've been able to take to my clients going forward.
Ariel: Can we talk about the fact that you didn't get to choose that developmental editor? Did it change your approach to working with them?
Beth: Oh, I was scared to death of them! I guess maybe that's... that is something that is maybe good to bring out here is that, one, even editors need editors. Just because I work with other people's words professionally, does not mean that mine are coming out well, always well or correctly. The other thing is, it doesn't mean that I don't still have those same butterfly feelings of going in and having that person who's going to read my work, who is a professional, who knows all of the fancy words. You always assume that your editor knows more than you do, and is going to see something.
Ariel: Which I think might be a wrong assumption.
Beth: That's true. I think that, you know, it is funny, because as a writer, I went in thinking, Oh, my gosh, my editors are these super professionals who know all of this stuff, and I know nothing. But as an editor, I spend a lot of time with my clients, and with my authors reminding them that a... this is a very subjective business. Especially, I'm a developmental editor. So a lot, I don't have a Chicago Manual of Style set of rules to follow. We're going on intuition and a wide background of reading and feedback. But my editors are often expressing their opinions, not necessarily the thing, the right things. And so what they're doing is suggesting—
Ariel: Yes!
Beth: —changes, and I have... and then we can have that conversation. And I encourage my writers to have that conversation with me. You know, I might say, I don't think you need chapter two. But I am always open to you coming back and say, Oh, no, Chapter Two is absolutely essential, and here's why.
Ariel: How do you know when to advocate for the things that you want versus letting the editor rule? How do you know when to say stet?
Beth: (laughing) First of all, I'm not sure that, yeah, I think that some writers don't even know what stet means.
Ariel: (aside) If you listened to last week's episode, you know that we already talked about what stet means. But if you ever come across publishing terms that you don't know, where can you go to look them up? Well, you can check the dictionary. Boring! Or you can hit me with an email, and I'll address it in future podcast episodes. Ok, back to Beth!
Beth: But that, I will say, I was not trained through formal education as an editor, I worked through organizations and was mentored outside the traditional publishing process. So there were a lot of internal terms that I didn't know when I first started out. But having said that, part of my question is, How important is this to me? Is this something that... is this a hill I'm willing to die on? Is this a hill that I'm willing to sacrifice I something else for? You can't say no to everything. If you're saying no to everything, either you have the wrong editor 100%. Or you have to ask yourself if you're really listening. In my cases, there were times where my editor said, Is this really necessary? Because again, we were trying to cut. And I came back and said, Yeah, I think it is because it answers... it answers this question that I know my audience asks a lot. I know who I'm writing for. And so I've done a lot... spent a lot of time understanding what their questions are, or what their, their interest level is. People really want to know about this part of the journey of the Camino. People really want to know in marketing, in author marketing, they really always ask about x. And so even if we're in a place where we need to cut words, this is something we can't cut, because my audience wants it. And that's not an emotional, Oh, I'm attached to this. That's a trust me as the author, I know what my people want. There's also a thing where you have to ask, how much is your voice—how... is anything happening that your editor is changing your voice. And I had fan—I have had fantastic editors all the way across the board. My developmental editor was wonderful, about gently pointing out things that we could work together on but not over changing anything. Probably the hardest thing I pushed back on was, my copy editor for Walking to the End of the World was not a fan of one-line paragraphs. It’s a book that I want to make it sound like I'm sitting down with someone and having...like, sharing with them. And so I make a lot of jokes. And I make a lot of asides. And that is my writing voice. And so I also tend to throw in these kind of short one-line paragraphs. She did not...she did... I don't know what, we didn't ever really fully talk about it. But she didn't like or didn't think that those were appropriate. And so when I was reviewing my copy edits, she had bunched a lot of those into paragraphs. You know, they're still my words, it's still my ideas. But I would look at some of those pages and go, No, no, I want... I want that emotional point at the end that a paragraph break brings. I want some... the reader to pause a little bit and get... and just get that emotional thought and then be ready to move forward. And so I didn't undo everything that she did. There’re still a lot denser paragraphs in that final book than I had originally written. But there are also more breaks than she wanted there to be. And that was fine. There was not a conflict about that. We came to the point where we both felt like it was the right work.
Ariel: I'm a freelance copy editor and proofreader. And when I work with Indies, I often don't get to see how they felt about their critiques from me, right? Because they're doing their own cleanup. But when I work with publishers, I get to do that cleanup round and see their feedback and see what they've decided to keep and what they are not as happy about.
Beth: Right.
Ariel: It makes my heart race. Because it's very humbling, being a copy editor and worrying that you're going to mess with somebody's word. Somebody's voice.
Beth: Yeah. What you just said: as editors, we also have that bit of, oh, what is an author going to think of our comments? As much as I have nervousness as a writer when my book is with the editor, I also, as an editor, have that same little flutter of what are they going to think when I send my editorial feedback to a client? What if they don't agree? What if they don't, you know, what if... what if they come back with all of that feedback?
Ariel: How, as an author, do you maintain that confidence to continue advocating for your work?
Beth: I think it's partly what you just said: to remember that it is my work. The writing doesn't belong to the editor. The editor is there to take an objective, distant look at the work and to look at it through the eyes of a reader. But it's never supposed to be the editor’s voice that's coming through. They don't get the final say, whatever happens. This is mine, whatever... whatever I choose to put out into the world, that's my name on the cover, and how much I'm willing to filter that feedback and advocate for my own work, part of that is just a part of personality. It's also... it's also a statement as to how, how strongly you feel about your own book.
Ariel: How did you choose the editors that you worked with? You said that when you were working with a publisher, they were chosen for you. But when you were self-publishing, you hired your own and you worked with beta readers. How did you find those people that you trusted?
Beth: My theory on beta readers is that you should find people who are well read, and preferably well read in your genre. So if you're writing mystery novels, you gotta find people who write mystery, read mystery. If you're writing memoir, you want somebody who has some experience in memoir. But the third thing is that you also don't want your beta readers to be people who are too close to you. My running joke is you don't want your beta readers to be anyone you’ve ever had Thanksgiving dinner with, because at that point, your beta reader knows you personally, whether they're friends or family, and their feedback is going to be given to you not to the book that you're reading. And so when I was looking for beta readers, both times, I went to my social media networks, my—I have an email newsletter, because I am an editor and I do this, I work with writers—and said, I'm looking for... I'm writing a book, here's the summary. I'm looking for people to read it and give me feedback on my first draft. You know, this is still a work in process, I would just love to know how it's coming across to other people. If you’re in my circle, or people I have not talked to physically in six months, I would love to hear from you. Or if you know other people who like to do this kind of thing, ask them if they would be interested in being my betas. The book is going to be this long, I will give you very specific questions and feedback, you will be thanked in the acknowledgments. And you know, if there's anything nice I can do for you in return, let me know. And that was my way of getting just a little bit of distance from those people so that I could trust that they were... that they were going to give my book an external read. And I also think it's important with beta readers to give them questions, because you're not going to a professional editor at that point, you're going to people who love to read, and they don't know what kind of feedback you want. And so asking them, what was your favorite scene? Or what was the scene that made... you know was, was there a place in this book that you got bored and wanted to close it? Was there a specific scene that did not resonate with you? If you know that you have certain habits, ask them. I know that my writing style, when I'm trying to be funny, sometimes doesn't hit. And so I wrote... in both of my experiences, I've asked my beta readers like, Is there a joke that you thought was either cringy or not funny? And so anyway, give them questions like that. So that's... that was my beta reader process.
Ariel: The email that you sent out looking for beta readers was so specific, did you worry that that was too much information or that you were asking for a lot? Was is... were there hesitations when you set that out? Or were you just... you're just a really confident human?
Beth: Probably a little of both. I know that my community is full of people who love to read. And I didn't send out all of the questions when I first asked. It was a two-step process. So the first step is, does anybody want to be a beta? And then I get, you know, the 10 people who say yes, or whatever. And then I send that... when I send them the manuscript, I also send them a, I am open to any feedback you want to give me. But if you need some specific structure, here are the questions that I would love feedback on.
Ariel: Okay.
Beth: So they can comment all over the manuscript, or they can do that. But I only said that to the people who had already offered.
Ariel: Okay!
Beth: Good clarification point there. As far as my copy editor, when I hired a copy editor, I was doing some work for an organization called the Editorial Department, which was a network of editors, people would contact them and then they would assign editors, and then they could help, right, especially independent writers go all the way through the process. And so I had access to a network of copy editors who had already been vetted or trusted, and I actually went to the organization and said, here's my book, who would you recommend? Because they’re... they have worked with these people. And so that's how I hooked up with my copy editor. We worked directly, but I got the referral. I think in editing, most times, referrals are one of the best ways to find the person who's a good fit.
Ariel: Yeah. So the other part of your career that I wanted to talk about, you know, I've read a lot about the editing process for self-publishing and for traditional publishing, but something that's not as transparent is, what's it like for ghost writing? Is it just one-on-one with the author or a company that you're contracted with? Or do you still do back and forth?
Beth: My ghostwriting experience has always primarily been one-on-one with the author. I am often introduced by either the author's agent or the author's publisher, depending on how far into the process they are. That publisher and that agent are peripherally involved. But the ghostwriting process itself is, generally speaking, working directly with the author, the person who owns the content, who has the story, or who has the knowledge. I'm the writer, they're the author. We spend most of our time working together to get a manuscript that we both feel good about. And so I write and then they give feedback. And then we bounce back and forth almost in a co-writing sort of situation, until we have a manuscript that both of us feel like is done and ready. And then we turn it in to either the agent or the publisher, again, depending on that process. And then we start the editing process the way that you would with any other book. But the publisher is giving both of us feedback. The author always has the final say. As a ghostwriter, my job is to be the secret weapon. My job is to help this person, whoever they are, tell the story that they want to tell in the best possible way.
Ariel: You’re like a pen knife.
Beth: Yeah. You shouldn't be able to look at a book that I have written and identify my writing style. I talked earlier about I like jokes, I like one-line paragraphs. Well, not all of my clients do. And some of them have entirely different communication patterns than I do. My job as a ghostwriter is to communicate in their pattern.
Ariel: That's so hard.
Beth: It's a very different process. I love the creative side of it, I love the... you're taking a set of ideas and finding the path through them to create a book without having to be the expert in that topic, or the person who has had that experience.
Ariel: Yeah.
Beth: For somebody who likes to stay inside and write books rather than have a huge platform and have a huge audience and go and live them, it's been a really great way to work within that industry.
Ariel: So let's move on to the questions that I ask every author I talk to you. First, what do you hate about the editing process?
Beth: As an editor or as a writer? So actually, let me answer that from both sides of things. And I already said this, but I want to come back to, ya know, what do I hate about the process: the waiting. I have done my part. And now this other person has it and there's nothing I can do but twiddle my thumbs until it comes back. So that for me is the hardest part. I love the part where I am, like, messing around with the words and rearranging paragraphs and thinking about the details of the work. I really, I love the writing and revising process. But the waiting is always hard.
Ariel: Yeah. Do you take on a new project while you're waiting for edits? Like, do you get back into writing? Or do you do it separately?
Beth: I do not have more than one writing project going at a time for my personal writing. Part of that is because my day job is also working with people on their words. And there's only so many stories I can keep in my head at the same time. As an editor, I always have at least one or two projects going. This week, I have three very different authors in my head already: fiction, nonfiction, how-to, memoir. And so the waiting process is easy because you can put it aside and say okay, I'm gonna do these other things. As a writer, I probably would say that I would spend that time of waiting, not working on something new but doing all of the other logistical things that get me ready for publishing. This is a great time to work on building your platform. This is a great time to work on building your connections to your audience, or doing the research and doing the reading. To know who the audience is. If I'm going to write a book, I have to be reading within that genre. I can't write without knowing what other authors are out there. What... what else is happening in that conversation?
Ariel: Do you ever worry that it's going to influence your voice?
Beth: Um, that's a good question. And that is something I have definitely heard. I don't think so, if you are reading widely enough that there's not just one voice. So where I see that happen is if somebody loves... if a writer loves an author's published works so much that they are subconsciously trying to be that author, as opposed to if I am writing a travel memoir, so I have written, or so I have read widely in the travel memoir genre. And I don't read while I'm writing, which I guess goes back to that question about what do you do? While you're waiting for the audience, that would be another time to go back and read. I take a break from write—reading in my genre while I am actively writing.
Ariel: What's the most common bit of feedback you receive on your writing?
Beth: Can you say that shorter? Can you condense? Can you compress? Can you... I can follow tangents, I can go down bunny trails, I am not a one-word answer kind of person for anything. And that comes through in my writing as well. And so one of my biggest jobs in revisions is usually condensing and compressing. And for my editors, that is also a, I don't think you need five words to say this when you can say three. So there's that. And then there's also, I mentioned this earlier, I don't think they're going to get that joke.
Ariel: Does that mean that your sense of humor is a little bit niche?
Beth: Humor in writing is hard. For any writer. I work with writers who have the same challenges, and I can hear in their—if I talk to them, I hear their voice, then I know what they're trying to get to. But it doesn't always translate well to the page. You know, puns or things that are funny in the moment, when you put them in writing so that they suddenly have a 10-year lifespan, maybe don't have the same timeliness factor. The writers who are actually writing straight comedic, slapstick, or comedy are amazing, because it is, it is a very difficult thing to get without... when a reader can't hear tone.
Ariel: Yeah.
Beth: So things that I think, you know, things that I throw off and think are funny, editors point out that if they read it in a serious tone of voice, then it can come across as misunderstood.
Ariel: Mhmm. Do you have any last words of advice for people who are looking for editors or people who are in the process right now?
Beth: I think that my best advice is to remember that this is your work. And there are encouraging things and challenges in that sentence, because your editor is not going to magically change who you are as a writer, your editor is not going to overcome writing challenges and storytelling challenges that you might have. They are there to be your support system. You are paying them or your publisher is paying them to be experts in the industry and to know, generally, how to recognize and make suggestions for changing and fixing things. But publishing and reading is very subjective and very creative. And it's up to you as the author to both do the work and to own the work.
Ariel: Mmm, yeah, that's a quotable.
Beth: (laughing) Yeah, I was like, I'm just gonna stop on that one.
Ariel: So the next portion of our program is a hot and wholesome gossip corner. Are there any other writers or creators doing something that you're excited about? Any shoutouts you want to give or people you want to lift up?
Beth: In thinking about this conversation before we had it, I coming back again to the how do we learn and share the craft of writing. I started thinking about the people who are out there really giving good content for writers. You know, the more you can learn as a writer about the editing process, the better your relationship is going to be with your editor. There's a couple of books I love as classics. Renni Browne's Self-Editing for Fiction Writers is an incredibly practical guide that helps you recognize certain habits in your own writing. Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story is mind blowing in its ways of helping you look at your big picture. If you're a narrative writer, if you're a memoir writer, or especially a novelist, Lisa Cron gives you ways of thinking about how your scenes build on each other and how your characters build on each other. But the book I'm reading right now: a developmental editor colleague, who I know only on social media, is Tiffany Yates Martin, who published a book this year called Intuitive Editing. And I have just started reading it. But I love the structure and the process that she helps writers look at their own work through. Because again, it's that question of how do you step back from what you want your book to be, and look at it from an external perspective. And she gives really practical ways of reviewing your work and revising your work. I'm really liking her voice. And as someone who has written publishing books, I know how much work it is to put that book together at the same time that you're also working with other writers, so.
Ariel: Well, if listeners want support, you can visit Beth's website to find out about upcoming classes—they're all online, so they're accessible from anywhere—or if you want to know about working with her as an editor. Walking to the End of the World is a funny, honest, informative book about a grand adventure taken by a normal—well... normal person. It's great armchair travel for a season when travel is a little difficult. And it's published by an independent nonprofit press with the goal of encouraging outdoor experiences and protecting the environment. You can find it at your favorite independent bookstore as well as the normal online places. Thank you again for talking with me, Beth, this has been wonderful.
Beth: Thanks, this was so much fun. I appreciate the conversation.