This week, I’m talking with indie author SiriGuruDev Singh, who shares how she found her editing team, her philosophy on harsh feedback, and where she draws the line for her YA stories. We also go off on fun tangents about YA in general and drafting longhand in pretty notebooks.
Big thanks to SiriGuruDev and her helpful daughter for their perseverance when she encountered technical issues with my recording platform. A couple of minutes of the recording got scratchy, but most of the sound is our usual standard of quality.
Music: Harlequin by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3858-harlequin
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Show Notes:
@SGDSingh, sgdsingh.com
Infernal Guard series: Emergence, Descent, Severance, and Forsaken: https://www.goodreads.com/series/221246-the-infernal-guard
Exiled to Freedom: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39970806-exiled-to-freedom
Dracula Retold: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43809704-dracula-retold
In the Heart of Babylon: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48565486-in-the-heart-of-babylon
BTS (aka the Bangtan Boys): https://ibighit.com/bts/eng/
Beth Jusino: https://bethjusino.com/
EYD Episode 2 Featuring Beth Jusino: https://www.arieledits.com/edit-your-darlings/2020/11/30/episode-2-beth-jusino
Northwest Editors Guild: https://www.edsguild.org/
Webcomic about typo flies after publishing: https://www.pikkoshouse.com/2021/01/22/simplemarkup173/
The Hate U Give: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32075671-the-hate-u-give
The Hunger Games
Looking for Alaska: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99561.Looking_for_Alaska
Everything, Everything: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18692431-everything-everything
Sookie Stackhouse novels: https://www.goodreads.com/series/42636-sookie-stackhouse
Stephen King
Candace Robinson: https://authorcandacerobinson.wordpress.com/
Faeries of Oz, Tin: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48931438-tin
LaTresa Payne: https://twitter.com/kisslelestweets
Snatched: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56772743-snatched
Stuart James: https://www.stuartjamesthrillers.com/
Apartment Six: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50651159-apartment-six
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. I'm Ariel Anderson and this week I'm joined by SiriGuruDev Singh, the author of the YA urban fantasy Infernal Guard series, Exiled to Freedom, Dracula Retold, and In the Heart of Babylon. She lives in New Mexico and Punjab, and when she's not writing, she could usually be found obsessing over the South Korean boy band BTS and making absolutely astonishing fan art. Thank you so much for making the time to talk with me, SiriGuruDev!
SiriGuruDev: Thank you, Ariel, for having me.
Ariel: So you said you've only worked with one editor. How did you find your editor, and what made them the right fit for you?
SiriGuruDev: Well, I think a lot of it was just luck because I was struggling with the whole querying thing for like, almost a year and just getting rejected, and my brother in law's daughter was visiting and she's from Seattle and she knew my editor, Beth Jusino, she’s awesome.
Ariel: Beth was on with us... episode 2? I know her in real life because we’re both in the Northwest Editors Guild, and she is fantastic.
SiriGuruDev: Yeah, for sure.
Ariel: Yeah, and so does she do your developmental editing and your copyediting?
SiriGuruDev: Yeah. The only thing she doesn’t do is proofreading because she says you want fresh eyes.
Ariel: Absolutely.
SiriGuruDev: She does the line edit and everything, but then I kind of add in more mistakes as I do the line edit.
Ariel: How did you find your proofreader then?
SiriGuruDev: My proofreaders are just a group of friends, as many people as I can get. So, I mean, yeah. That’s the first mistake I made with my first book, was I didn’t have enough proofreaders. I though, Oh, it can just be two people. And then we kept finding typos for like a whole year, over and over, and having to fix it.
Ariel: Like you published it and then...
SiriGuruDev: Yes, and then it was a mess. So we just kept fixing it and whoever bought the earlier copies has a really messed up copy, and hopefully now they have a passible copy where there's just a few typos, like pretty much every book. So, it is what it is. You live and learn, right?
Ariel: Yeah well, and I think that it's impossible to ever get all of the typos, you're never gonna get all of them, right?
SiriGuruDev: I guess if you had a huge team of people at some giant place, you would catch them, but yeah.
Ariel: There's still always going to be... I saw, oh I saw a really good webcomic lately that was... somebody had just published their book and then all of these little like flies are coming in, and they asked their editor what that's about. And she says that those are the typos that only appear after you hit Publish.
SiriGuruDev: Yes, I actually love them when I see them in bestsellers because I’m like, “Yes, I'm not the only one with typos!
Ariel: Everybody has them. There's this human instinct to look down on people who have typos in their books, but everyone, absolutely everyone has them.
SiriGuruDev: Yeah, and sometimes like I remember one book I read, the third book and I guess they rushed it, so the whole like last 50 pages was riddled with typos.
Ariel: Oh no!
SiriGuruDev: Probably if you got a later version it would be fine.
Ariel: Yeah, and I guess some strategies to kind of catch those towards the end of the book is to read the book—
SiriGuruDev: Backwards.
Ariel: Yeah, in small chunks from yeah, backwards from the end.
SiriGuruDev: Ugh, that sounds so tedious.
Ariel: Well, even when I'm proofreading, I'll often find myself reading because the story is good.
SiriGuruDev: Yeah, and then you start missing them.
Ariel: Right, so how do you stop reading when you're proofreading.
SiriGuruDev: Yeah I guess some people are just really good at it.
Ariel: On your website you have some—I love your website, by the way. I have gone through every page and read your list of question and answers. And you have some really great advice for writers on there when you say, “When people give you harsh feedback, don't give up. Take the input seriously, it's actually more helpful and productive than nice feedback.” Can you give a couple of examples of the harsh feedback and the nice feedback you've received and how it's influenced your writing?
SiriGuruDev: So when I said that, I was actually talking about beta readers, people who are helping you when the book is still in the process. Like, if I send my book to a beta reader and they just say they love it, that's not helping me. I want them to tell me everything they hate. Every little thing that they're confused by or they don't like or that... any little thing. That's what I love. And so I kind of meant that because, once your book’s published you’ve kind of moved on to the next project. People are either hate it or love it, or not even care one way or the other.
These reviews that are mean, to me it's like, if you went to a restaurant, the food was too spicy, and you hate spicy food. And then you just say “one star, I hate this restaurant,” instead of saying, “If you love spicy food you'll love this restaurant,” like, it should be more about what the book is than what you think it should be, so that other people who might like what that is, will like it.
And then as far as if something's actually, you know, an issue. Maybe they should tell you personally and you can fix something. But usually it's just, like, people say, “Oh, I hate YA, and I didn't realize this is YA, so I hated this book.” Like it's not really going to be productive feedback.
So, I guess that advice was kind of misleading because I meant, like, the harsher the better when they're helping me work on it.
I don't like people to be nice when it's a work in progress. Once it's finished, it’s finished. You're moved on to the next, the next book. You’re not thinking about the other one anymore.
Ariel: So you can't even remember that harsh feedback now? Like it didn't imprint itself onto your skin.
SiriGuruDev: The harsh feedback is usually I'm confused. You need to lengthen this scene. You go too fast. That's what I usually get is, you're going too fast. I write too short and I need to make things longer.
Ariel: Yeah, I think that there's two camps there. I'm, I'm with you on that side, I'm definitely on the concise writers camp. And then there's the writers who are constantly told this is taking too long. You're, you're dragging this out. And they have to cut.
SiriGuruDev: Yeah, like, I'm so paranoid about boring the reader that I tend to go too fast.
And people are like, I wasn't bored, but I was confused. And I'm like, Okay, tell me exactly where you started being confused, and then we work on the scene. That's what I like. And it's specific to, to the scene, and then it really helps.
Ariel: So you've never had a critique partner or a beta or an editor that was too harsh?
SiriGuruDev: Where they just said they hate the book, just everything about it?
Ariel: Or like they threw so much mud on the book, trying to, to give it a spa treatment.
SiriGuruDev: I had one with Dracula Retold where they just felt like, “why are you writing this book? It's like plagiarism.” And I'm like, it's in public domain I'm trying to rewrite Dracula so more people read it and appreciate and go back and read the classics. And they were like, “Well, I'm not interested.” I think that was the only time that happened. Okay, fair enough.
If you don't, if you're not interested in that kind of thing where it's a retelling of basically an exact retelling that you're just modernizing it, then you're just not going to be interested in it. So, yeah, and it also didn't feel as personal because that wasn't my book anyway, like none of the ideas were mine. It's, it's all taken from the original so you don't feel as hurt anyway.
Ariel: Yeah, let's get into that a little bit. Do you feel like there are bits of your stories that are so personal they can't be critiqued?
SiriGuruDev: No, no. I love harsh feedback, but it has to be specific like. It can't just be “I hate this book.” That's not helpful.
Well, I'll argue sometimes with my editor if she wants me to cut a whole scene. And then we'll talk about why. and I'll be attached to the scene. and so she'll say, okay, if you’re really attached to the scene, how can we make it work better? What are you trying to say in a better way? And then we’ll work on it. So I do get attached in that way I guess like going off on a tangent, like on my third book, I wanted to tell a story, a history story. And she was just like, Why is this here? It's not part of the actual story, you're off on a tangent. Telling a different story. And I felt like it was important to the character. And so I really wanted to keep it. And she was like, Okay then, you know, we have to tweak it here and tweak it there. So we did that.
Yeah, it doesn't really hurt my feelings, it's more like a discussion, like okay, why is it not working, how can we make it work? And then you change it.
Ariel: Yeah, I like that.
SiriGuruDev: I guess you can’t be too precious with stuff, right, you have to... Because it's for the reader, it's not for you, so if it's boring or if it's not working, then how to fix it. You can't just leave it like that.
Ariel: When you and Beth argue, who wins?
SiriGuruDev: I would say I make her compromise.
Ariel: Not the other way around?
SiriGuruDev: She's like, oh, all right, if you really insist on this, then this is how it'll work better than how you have it . Okay, we'll do that.
Ariel: I love that.
SiriGuruDev: But it's only happened, like I say it's only happened a couple times. Well actually, with Dracula too she said you need to make it even more concise, like stop trying to make it too close to the original, because the original is very long-winded. And she's like, cut all this out too, like, don't be too attached to the original. But that was fine, as long as it's not boring. That's the number one thing I always worry about.
Ariel: Let's talk about your Infernal Guard series. So you have Emergence, Descent, Severance, and Forsaken. And I wondered, has the editing approach changed over the course of those four books or, like, is there anything that you would have done differently now that you're four books in and looking back?
SiriGuruDev: Not really, I mean we pretty much found what works and just kept doing that. Like I say, you want a bigger team of proofreaders. Yeah, it's pretty much like the second draft goes to the plot betas, then it goes to developmental edit, you have a meeting, and then the copy edit, then proofreaders, and it kind of just stayed like that for all of them. Yeah.
Ariel: So you have a style sheet for the series, right? Did that evolve over the course of it?
SiriGuruDev: Okay, you have to explain what a style sheet is to me.
Ariel: Maybe I made an assumption. So the style sheet is. It's a document that holds all of the editorial decisions. You know: sometimes we allow commas here, or we always capitalize these sorts of terms, and then it also has a word list and a list of characters.
SiriGuruDev: Oh, I see what you’re saying. So like yeah, like in my story the monsters’ names are capitalized like if it's a vampire, Vampire is capitalized.
Ariel: Yeah, that's an interesting choice.
SiriGuruDev: Like the realms are capitalized. I don’t know if you would say “sheet” because I'm like tech impaired, so I just do all that kind of stuff on paper. But yeah, it kind of stayed the same.
Ariel: So your vampires, vampire is capitalized. Why?
SiriGuruDev: Because it's like if the creature—because there's a lot of also new creatures, so it's not just creatures you've heard of like vampire, werewolf. There's all these other terms, and it got... it seemed like it was less confusing if it was capitalized somehow. And we also had like a glossary in the back to explain everything too. Yeah, it just somehow looked clearer, I guess, is what it boils down to.
Ariel: I'm fascinated by all those little decisions and I ask authors all the time, you know, I noticed that you capitalize this creature’s species name but you didn't capitalize, say, human.
SiriGuruDev: We tried to keep it consistent. So I think human is capitalized if someone's calling human, calling someone human like it's a derogatory term or something. It might have been capitalized, but I can't remember.
Ariel: Treating human as a derogatory term. That's so interesting to me!
SiriGuruDev: For the monsters it is. They’re just these weak things.
Ariel: Yeah, yeah. I started reading In the Heart of Babylon, and I didn't know what it was about, I didn't know that it was horror, and I didn't know how it compared to any of your other works. So I was immediately surprised by the darkness that it showcases just straight out of the gate.
And maybe I shouldn't have been because like the artwork has skulls at the top of each chapter.
But it did make me wonder if your editor knew in advance some of the dark topics that you plan to cover, and did they or your critique partners or maybe a sensitivity reader, provide any feedback on those horror elements that either added balance or asked for more scariness, or maybe some changes to make it fit into that YA category?
SiriGuruDev: Well first of all, thanks for calling it horror, because I've always wanted to write a horror story and I felt like I failed, like it’s not a bit scary and it's just like... So yeah, that's a compliment. But yeah, Beth... she didn't know, and I mean she had read my other books so she knew like how dark I go anyway.
But the sensitivity readers: it was interesting because if anyone was white, they would have a problem with it, like—Oh, I just remembered now—somebody freaked out that it was too racist towards white people. And that person hated it. But it was interesting because all of my Black sensitivity readers were like, this is totally realistic, this could be going on right now, like they didn't see any problem with it.
We talked about whether or not the N word should be in there, and I decided that since I'm white, it shouldn't be in there. So we hinted at it a couple times, like we do like an N and then a dash, like the person gets like hit right as they were about to say that word, so it's implied but it's not actually there, and you kind of know that the characters all say it all the time when it's not like on stage or whatever you call it.
But yeah, I mean as far as the YA category goes. It's really confusing because it's such a wide range.
Ariel: Yeah, for sure.
SiriGuruDev: Just like, let's just go off the idea that YA is any book where the main characters are under 18, and just leave it at that. And then I put a warning on Amazon, like it should say “ninth grade and up.” So people kind of know it's not for like... like it has bad language. All my books have bad language. So if that really bothers people I want them to know ahead of time like don't buy this for your 10 year old if you don't want them to be reading that. Like, I don't want to be responsible for that, so I try to make it clear. But yeah, the YA category is a bit all over the place.
Ariel: Yeah, I think it's... it’s unusual to find such dark YA.
SiriGuruDev: Oh really?
Ariel: Yeah, though, I mean, you know, The Hate U Give is YA, and deals with some very dark, heavy topics, right? It's not unheard of for sure.
SiriGuruDev: Racism. But you could also make the argument that Harry Potter deals with the idea of heavy topics of racism and prejudice and people who kill people. I mean, there's no bad language in it.
Ariel: Well, but there is, she just made up her own bad language.
SiriGuruDev: Or you'll say, someone was cursing or scream or something. It's interesting also I've noticed that in a lot of the contemporary YA there's bad language, right, but there's not like gory stuff. And then in the more fantasy or dystopian YA, like take the Hunger Games for example, there's all kinds of horrible stuff going on, but there's no bad language. So it’s sorta like, huh, okay.
Ariel: Yeah, it's like some authors will choose. They can choose violence, sex, or cursing, choose one of those three.
SiriGuruDev: I guess that's one thing I've never seen in YA is, like, explicit sex scenes. It's usually like a fade out or.
Ariel: A fade to black.
SiriGuruDev: Exactly. So I guess that's one thing you could say across the board, isn't really—but I haven't read that much contemporary YA. So yeah like, is Finding Alaska YA? I mean that gets pretty explicit.
Ariel: Yeah, finding Alaska is definitely YA. I think maybe Everything Everything had not just a fade to black.
SiriGuruDev: And that's YA, so yeah, I just haven't read enough contemporary. I guess if you're doing contemporary and there's curse words but no crazy violence, you can also do more explicit sex scenes. What's the rule?
Ariel: Right. But then I also think about what was I reading in high school? I was definitely reading like the Sookie Stackhouse novels, which has violence and racism and sex.
SiriGuruDev: Yeah, I mean I started reading Stephen King when I was eight.
Ariel: Oh yeah.
SiriGuruDev: Like, I don't think we need to... not realize kids’ intelligence. They know that this is a book and it's fiction and...
Ariel: Yeah. So let's move on to the questions that I ask every author I talked to. So, first, what do you really hate about the editing process? What's uncomfortable for you?
SiriGuruDev: The main thing I don't like is just reading the same manuscript over and over and over and over and over again. Once I feel like I'm doing something productive, like I have the line edit to do I, I feel like I'm doing something, and then you have a sense of accomplishment when that's finished, right? But then you kind of feel uncomfortable about the typos you've left. So, yeah, at some point by the end of it, you just go, I'm calling this done, because we've done all we can at this point.
Ariel: If I have to look at this one more time, I'm going to throw up.
SiriGuruDev: Yeah, right, exactly.
Ariel: And then I think you've already answered this one, but maybe you have a different response: What's the most common bit of feedback you receive on your writing?
SiriGuruDev: Yeah, to expand, expand scenes, expand, expand, expand, and a lot of times it's the romantic scenes. They’re like, “yeah, give us more here” and I'm like, “Ah! Okay.” And then you send it back, “How about this?” They're like, “No, we still need more.” Okay, I'll keep trying.
Ariel: Yes, definitely. I'm a YA fan, and I gotta tell you, I'm 100% in it for the yearning.
SiriGuruDev: Yes, but feels. Gotta have those feels.
Ariel: Yes! So, I gotta have those feels, for sure.
SiriGuruDev: Yeah, where my mom is like, “No, it's plenty” and I'm like no, they want more.
Ariel: Ooh, your mom is one of your betas?
SiriGuruDev: She was a huge fan, but she's really scared of vampires. So, by the time I got to Dracula Retold, she was done, so she helped with like the first four books. She just read my read my latest book and said, “You didn't tell me there was vampires and I was awake all night with nightmares.”
Ariel: And then, do you have any last words of advice?
SiriGuruDev: I know it sounds cliché, but I always say like, life is too short, like just enjoy it. Do what you enjoy, right? Make time every day for what you enjoy. You enjoy writing, make that a part of your life every day. Don't worry about all the other technical side of it, and you'll get to that when you get to that. Just do it.
Ariel: Do you draft longhand? Is that what I'm picking up on?
SiriGuruDev: No, I outline longhand. I do a chapter outline. So I guess it gets pretty detailed. But, I just write on my keyboard.
Ariel: I write longhand.
SiriGuruDev: Wow! The whole thing?
Ariel: Yeah, yeah, so I did, I did the outline longhand, and anytime that I got stuck I would like tell the story to my dog and that would help get me unstuck and I keep going, and then it came time to sit down and write, and I'm just... I stare at that blinking cursor and I hate it, and it's so much easier for me to just get into the flow if I have my cute notebook and a good pen. Preferably purple.
SiriGuruDev: I love the cute notebook and the pen, but I use it just for the chapter outline. So, so once you have it totally finished you just copy it down.
Ariel: So, once I have about a chapter, I'll take that chapter and put it into a Word document, and—
SiriGuruDev: Oh, OK, so you do chapter by chapter as you go.
Ariel: Yeah, just about, and as I'm putting it into the Word document, I'm also doing my first revision on it.
SiriGuruDev: So you don't outline before you... you don't outline the whole thing and then... you just start writing from chapter one and see.
Ariel: Oh no, I definitely outlined, and then I take a chunk of... because I also don't write linearly. So I take a chunk of the outline and I write it on a note card, and I keep that note card in my notebook with me.
SiriGuruDev: I have to write linearly because I'll realize, wait a minute, that doesn't work. Like, as I'm going, like this has to flow with what happened before. I think if I didn't write linearly I would just end up having to delete what I worked on. But I've never tried that. So interesting, and you read to your dog.
Ariel: Yeah, well I don't read to my dog I... I work out story plot points with my dog. Right, I'm stuck and so I'm just... I'm just telling him the story, and in doing so I'm, I'm fixing it.
SiriGuruDev: OK, I did notice when I'm talking out loud like with my daughter, I'll get ideas. She'll get so bored, she'll be like you're not even listening to my feedback. I'm like, Hold on, I got an idea. I have to write that down right now.
Ariel: It's so shiny.
SiriGuruDev: When you get stuck, it's like a puzzle.
Ariel: I've put this character in the hardest possible position I can think of, and now they have to get out somehow on their own?
SiriGuruDev: Or like some world building thing where you realize, okay but that doesn't make sense because this is the rule, then it has to go with.
Ariel: Yeah, so sorry. A little aside there, that was fun! So the last portion of my program is a hot and wholesome gossip corner. Are there any other writers or creators doing something you're excited about? Any shoutouts you want to give or people you want to lift up?
SiriGuruDev: I want to shout out Candice Robinson, she is amazing because she just... I don’t know what she does, she's a machine. She comes out with a new book, seems like every other week. She started her Faeries of Oz, she just came out with her Tin. Now she's out with a second one.
Shout out to the LaTresa Payne. She's the same way. She helped me a lot with In the Heart of Babylon. She's so generous, and she just came out with Snatched—sometimes devils call themselves mom. She writes, like, contemporary thriller.
And then there's Stuart James. He writes like horror, thriller. Super nice. He came out with books like Apartment 6. Check him out.
There's also Sergio Gomez. His latest as a foreign novella called The Visitor. But he also wrote Camp Slaughter.
Also, Beth Wordsdell. And she’s also super nice. And she has Earth's Angels trilogy.
She just helps authors so much. If you ever need any, you know, tech support kind of stuff, she, she teaches classes, and it's all free, and she's super generous.
And yeah, there's so many awesome indie authors. It's really fun. I think it's really fun to be a writer in this day and age, where you don't have the gatekeeper thing happening. You can just follow your dream. Even if only one person buys your book and loves it, at least you’ve shared with someone.
Yeah I'm constantly just sort of in awe of the indie community, and I use that word very intentionally, because I think that indie authors have connected with each other and lifted each other up so much, and given freely of their time and resources to help more authors.
SiriGuruDev: Absolutely.
Ariel: If you want to check out SiriGuruDev’s work, head to her website, sgdsingh.com, or follow her on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. Thank you again for talking with me, SiriGuruDev.
SiriGuruDev: Thank you, Ariel. It's been fun.
Ariel: If you loved this episode of Edit Your Darlings, why not share it with a friend? Remember to rate and review on Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast fix. For show notes go to edityourdarlings. com, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @editpodcast, or I'm @arielcopyedits. Until next week, cheers!