“Is editing my memoir professionally really so important?” you ask. “I’ve already shown it to my sister-in-law who teaches English at the high school, and she says it’s great.”
You have worked long and hard to write your memoir. You are ready to turn the computer off and receive the accolades you feel you deserve! You are inclined to believe your sister-in-law—after all, it’s what you want to believe.
Wouldn’t it be great to have “There I’ve gotten it all out and that’s that with my memoir” be the same as “The story is ready to be well applauded by the reader”?
When I receive a manuscript that the author has already sent to relatives and friends and hear, “There won’t be much to do,” I am always amazed at how much there still is to tweak to get a manuscript in shape to really make an author proud.
At some level, you are ready to move on, but—wait! Is your memoir really ready for its audience? Is what you believe to be ready for the world actually a penultimate draft rather than a ready-to-be-published manuscript? It may even be a very good draft but it is probably not the finished manuscript you are hoping it is.
Your sister in-law who teaches English at the high school is probably an excellent proofreader—commas, periods and spelling, but unless she has written a long manuscript herself, her expertise is in deconstructing a text and not in constructing one. In fact, she probably has very little competence in how to write a longer piece.
In addition, she will be seeing you many times a year. She does not want to sour your relationship with criticism!
When is a good time to work with a professional editor?
Most writers ought to engage an editor who is also a writer before moving a manuscript on to the public. When you think your writing is ready, it probably isn’t. The fact is you probably need memoir editing.
I had never received memoir editing the way you folks at The Memoir Network do it. When my editor, pointed out how my character’s dialog in the middle of the book wasn’t consonant with what I had her say at the beginning, I knew I had a serious developmental reader who was going to help me shape my story. You folks take editing as seriously as I take telling my story. It’s been a good fit.
Sandra Swain
An editor—especially one skilled in developmental editing—will help you to identify and make the decisions you must make to bring the story, its theme and its promise, out in the open for all to appreciate. An editor will assess your story pacing and shaping and help you tighten both. An editor will help you articulate your story by steering you to develop strong metaphors and vivid images to approach your message from a different angle.
The guidance of the posts below will help you with these tasks. After you’ve read the posts, do yourself a favor and check out the editing services pages and learn how The Memoir Network offers so much more than the blog to help you generate the best manuscript you are capable of.
Editing your memoir is not to be ignored or shortchanged—especially for the first-time and (probably) only-time writer. You have already worked too hard not to bring your best book to the public.
To answer your question, “Is editing my memoir professionally important?” I have to answer: “Absolutely!”
Need a Manuscript Review?
Friends and family love your memoir. They say you are an outstanding writer, but you’re not sure. Perhaps you need a manuscript review. See inside.
Be a Better Memoir Writer with Deliberate Practice
We all wear many hats as we go through our days. In my case, I am a writer, a memoirist, a teacher, a memoir coach, a memoir editor, a co-author, a book publisher, and finally, a small business person. I wear those hats with pride and, I hope, some accomplishment.
Beyond these, I wear other hats as all of you do also. One is that of an athlete of sorts: there has been swimming, jogging, and weight lifting. In this post, want to focus on how I worked on my physical conditioning through deliberate practice and then apply that to memoir writing.
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So You Wonder How Memoir Editing Works
You ask how memoir editing works. This is an important and reasonable question.
In this post, I will take you through a typical process. (The process explained here is one an inexperienced writer would take. An experienced writer can expect to shorten the process.)
How Memoir Editing Works
When I begin the memoir editing process with clients, I tell them that proper editing generally requires three “read-throughs.” Unless the manuscript is already at a high level of organization and polish, no editor can give a manuscript all the attention it deserves in one reading.
That’s simply how memoir editing works when done properly
Reading a manuscript without doing any specific editing and forming only a general impression has always seemed a good idea in theory, but I have not found a way to do so that is economical for the client. I have therefore evolved this concept of read-throughs as a memoir editing technique. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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What Is Developmental Editing and Why You Need It for Your Self-Published Memoir
What is developmental editing and do you need it? If the big New York publishing houses NEVER publish a manuscript without extensive editing, why would you as a self-publisher?
A professional memoir editor can quickly and effectively help you tweak your lifestory so that you get to say more clearly and dynamically what you have been trying to say. You can’t write your best memoir without developmental editing—it’s game-changing.
Editors come in many stripes: some are copy editors, others are content editors while still another kind is a developmental editor.
In this post, I want to focus on developmental editing and how it will help you write a memoir you can be proud to send into the world.
[Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Help to Write My Memoir: Here’s What a Top Editor Does for You
What a Top Editor Does For You
People often ask, “What sort of book editing input does a client receive from her/his Memoir Network editor?”
The answer, of course, varies according to the client. No two receive the same response. We always individualize.
You persist in asking, “Yes, yes, but what sort of manuscript input can I expect from a memoir editor that I begin to work with?”
“Ok, I get it—you want a sample communication.”
Here is one that went out to a new client who had sent us a manuscript and wanted us to read it through and make overall recommendations. This is an actual letter so, to protect the client, we have taken out all references that might point to the client and identify him or her or his or her story. We’ll show you the same respect.
What a top editor does for you is push you
Dear Editing Client,
I have read through about half the text you sent. So many good things to say about the memoir manuscript: [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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How to Cut Memoir Text
To ensure that your memoir is a tight one, it will probably be necessary to cut some of your text.
Having finished my childhood memoir, French Boy / A 1950s Franco-American Childhood, of course, I have been thinking of all the things that I did not put into the memoir. Some of these omissions, I would say, were interesting and might have contributed to my story’s theme and plot line. However, the memoir had reached 350 pages, and I knew it was imperative to limit any further lengthening of the story.
Many writers have said—and I paraphrase—”a work of art is never finished. It is merely abandoned.”
Keeping this observation in mind, I understood, as every writer must, that I needed to choose the point of abandonment carefully. Cut back too early, and you don’t make your point—establish the importance of your theme—in your memoir. Abandon too late, and you risk having too much in your memoir and turning your reader off.
Cut memoir text
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Five Tips for Avoiding Vagueness in Your Memoir
Avoiding vagueness in writing is something many writers struggle with.
When writing slips into vagueness, the reader reads and rereads the text and does not quite “get it.”
I’m sure this has happened to you. You are reading something and you find yourself wondering: “What’s the author trying to say? What’s going on here?”
Not a good place for an author to land a reader.
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How to write vividly–Avoiding vagueness in writing
If you want to learn how to write vividly, use the following tips for avoiding vagueness in writing your memoir.
When a manuscript slips into a vagueness, the reader reads and rereads and does not quite “get it.”
“What’s the author trying to say here?” we ask ourselves. “What am I missing?”
Here are a few of my ideas as to why this may happen.
1.
Solution if this is you: journal around the story, look at your photos, take a walk to ruminate about the events you have written about, ask yourself, “What exactly am I trying to convey here? What do I really mean to say?”
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Self-Editing Tips for Memoir Writers
The self-editing tips I’m sharing with you in this post will save you a lot of time and mistakes! Whether you are self-editing as you write or are going through your manuscript one last time before sending it to a professional editor, you’ll find these tips to be super helpful for better self-editing.
While I am offering you the steps in a linear way—mentioning one thing and then another—in practice as you go through your manuscript, you’ll do well to be aware of all of these steps at one time. That is, you are looking to edit everything.
Of course, you will on various occasions perhaps slight one element of self-editing or another, but when you realize this, you can go back and re-edit.
Going through each of these self-editing tips on your manuscript will take a while. I even recommend that you do it several times and even perhaps a month or two in between times. What this does is distance you emotionally from your manuscript. When you return to it, you’ll read it as the reader rather than as the writer.
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