From Author to Authority Series - Editing and Waiting

Once your book goes to the publisher for editing, it is officially out of your hands and all you can do is wait and trust. Easier said than done, I know! This week I'm sharing about what I learned in the process of waiting and how I leaned on God as I worked through the edits.

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Transcript

Juli Wenger: 0:00

You are on this earth for a purpose, you want to live a life that matters. So let's get through the fear and the overwhelm and all the crap that gets in the way of you living the life of yours. This is the becoming ourselves podcast where we are fired up about you getting clear on who you are, what you're called to, and how to get there. Because the world is waiting for you to show up and own your power. I'm your host, Juli Wenger, a coach, a speaker at Jesus lover, and Enneagram, two, and a tree shaker, let's dive into what's keeping you stuck. Because on the other side, is a life that's fired up. Welcome back to from author to authority. This is week seven in our series leading up to the launch of fired up fulfilled and free. Time is ticking down. And we are almost at the point in time where I get to hold a physical copy of this book in my hands. And there's something so surreal about that. While we wait, though, let's dive back into the stage of the journey where the book has gone off to publishers. And it's out of your hands. And it was out of my hands. And I don't know about you. But as someone who likes to control the things, having it be out of my hands is always a personal growth opportunity. And it's always a faith opportunity of saying, Okay, I'm going to trust that this is going to work out I'm going to trust that everything is going to proceed in a timely kind of way, I'm going to trust that whatever this next phase looks like that I have never walked through before. And that I have very limited frame of reference for because I've never walked before is going to be good, I'm going to lean into the everything is for me space. And here's what's cool about the waiting game, waiting for that first round comeback of the manuscript is you get to just let it go. Once you decide to trust the process, and once you decide to trust the people involved in the process, and once you decide to trust that God has the process, there is this breathing room. And there was space to think about other things or a space to do other things or space to rest. And then when it comes back, there is space to pick up and do the work all over again. So here's where I want to go first, because I actually want to dive into with the editing piece of the process. A few fundamental context pieces. Let's call them that. So number one, there are different types of editing. And this was all stuff I had no clue like no foggy idea about prior to heading into this space. Now here are the three typical buckets. Okay, number one, developmental editing, number two, copy in line editing. Number three, proofreading. And when you are picking your publisher, we go back to last week's episode talking about that, and what are you looking for part of the packages or if you're just hiring out the editing specifically, what you're looking for is some combination of different types or different styles, which may mean you need more than one person may not it may mean you need more than one company it may not. So what's developmental editing? Developmental is less about grammar and sentence structure and more about content. This is something that wasn't really included in the package that I went for. But I felt confident enough that the context was there and that it flowed that I didn't need that. Developmental is, Are there big holes in my story? Are there places that need to get flushed out? Is there more context that's required? Some of the things that I was asking for feedback on with my pre readers. But if you are newer to writing, if you are really questioning the quality of the book, a developmental editor might be someone that you want to loop in on the process. Copy and line editing is about going through and looking at all of the grammar and the sentence structures and the paragraph structures and looking for all the little Little bitty details, all of the period placements and the quotation placements and the brackets around your references and all of that detail oriented, finicky stuff they're not looking so much at, does the story flow they're looking at, are there things when people read this, that they're gonna go? That sentence just totally doesn't make sense? Or why is there no period there, whereas the developmental editor is going to look at it and say, You just made that comment, you made that reference, or you touched on that point half a paragraph ago, and this seems repetitive. Or there's this story that's in here. But it feels like there's something missing, that takes it a little deeper or makes it more personal. We'll see how there's a difference. And then proofreading is this quick, once over, it's a scan, it's a make sure that if there's any other little bits and pieces that got missed, we have one last look at it. Okay, so those are the three essential styles of things. So I'm going to take you into my process, I send it off for this first round of edits, and it comes back and it lands on my desk. And let's be clear, there is a human component to this. Because we're human, we're not going to catch everything because they are human, your editor is not going to catch everything. Grammarly is helpful, but it's not going to catch everything. And some of the things it does catch aren't helpful. So it came back and I went through their edits. And there weren't a ton of major things. But there were a lot of little things. And as I'm going through their edits, and I'm looking at them, I'm seeing a couple other things here and there, as I'm scanning the document myself, because remember, it's been like a month. So I have fresh eyes on it in a different way than I did after taking a week off in advance of doing my first round of self editing. So I'm going through and I'm fixing some little things, and I'm tweaking some little things. And I realize, if I'm going to make any big changes to this book, now that I've had time, now that I have fresh eyes, now that I can look at it through a different lens, because there's just been time. If I'm going to do that, I better do it now before it goes through another two rounds of edits. So guess what? We're back to reading the whole entire thing out loud, chapter by chapter section by section and tweaking and fixing and adding comments for the editors saying should we tweak this? Should we change this? Should we add periods to this whole list? How does this work? How does that work? So there was this really in depth process. And it took me two and a half, three weeks to get through my second round of full edits on this book before I sent it back to them again. And as with the first time there's this imposter syndrome that shows up like, look, it's made it through a round of editing and you still don't have it. All right. And there's still so much to do. And there's still so much to figure out. And by the way, have you even started thinking about the launch yet? No, not really. And so there was again, this opportunity to step through that fear because all that overwhelm and all that impostor syndrome is underpinned by fear of not enough, or not having enough or not being enough. It's like no, my enoughness is settled. And this is my assignment, and they will complete it. So I sent it back to the publishing company for their second round. Now both of these first two rounds that they did are what we call the copy, inline editing, they're looking for all that grammatical stuff, all the little stuff, they're going through it thoroughly. And it came back the second time, along with my bio and the summary. And there's all these other little pieces that go on the book cover and on Amazon and places like that, that they're editing to, but it comes back again. And there's less changes than the first time. And I went through and approved and rejected changes within about 15 minutes. I was like sweet, we'll send it back. And it'll be fast. And look at me achieving. It's one of those tap yourself on the shoulder like dusted off like Yeah.

Unknown: 9:42

And then God put a pause on me and he's like, hold up, hold up.

Juli Wenger: 9:45

I want you to do it again. Do the do the wet the whole thing. What you want me to wet now. I want you to read through the whole thing again. I mean, he wasn't that clear what it was a feeling like I knew That was the push. So okay. Okay, we'll do it again, we'll make sure. It was just this clarity moment of oh, right, because the next round is the proofread. And the proofread is intended to just catch the little last bits and pieces. And so I better make sure I better make sure it's done. And it had been another few weeks. By the time that I got back to it, they were really quick on their turnaround. But I had life happen. And so it was a couple of weeks later, and I sat down with it, and I went through it, and I read it out loud for a third time. And I changed a lot of stuff. And I added a lot of stuff. And here's where his provision showed up this time, this was different. Because I'd had people placed in front of me and opportunities placed in front of me and the funding placed in front of me to be able to go and do. But this time, this time, he was doing heart surgery early on in the process. And I think we talked about this, but early on in the process, I said he was working on my pride as I was going through actually writing the book, and allowing it to be his book and allowing it to be about him and allowing it to be about my faith, and worrying less about what people think. And dealing with some of my own stuff. This time, the in between brought up some things and some context for me, that actually meant I needed to go back and change how I spoke about a couple of events that I'd referenced in the book, a couple of things that were little T traumas for me, he grew me in this in between, in a way where for me to stand in integrity, for me to be able to release this book and know that I had honored him and myself and the people involved, I needed to tweak a couple of things, I needed to rewrite a couple of sections, I needed to review things and make sure that I owned what was mine, and that they owned what was theirs. And part of me didn't want to do it, part of me didn't want to go back and rework it again, part of me didn't want to go through the whole process of reading it out loud again. But there was this tension. And this is how he works with me, he shows up and there's like a physical tension, it's like my whole system goes into an arrest. It's like whoa, full body reaction, you have to go deal with this. Now, you have to go take down this, maybe you've had this happen before, you have to go take down the social media post. Now, you need to go phone this person. Now you need to go check your email. Now it was the same thing. Go rewrite this section, go rework that section, go reframe based on the new perspective that I am giving you this part. Because I need you to do that. So it honors my other kids. So no one's hurt. And so I did. And I sent it back again. And as I'm recording this and waiting for the proofreads back, I did my last full on, read through with changing it. And when it comes back again, in the next week or so, I'm going to read through it again. But I'm going to read through it with the intention of proofreading. Are there any little last bits and pieces? Are there any brackets that I noticed that the humans on the other end of this mist? Are there any parentheses that seem inconsistent? Are there any lists that seem inconsistent? Are there any just little tweaks and you better believe I'm gonna have my grammar legal in the whole time? Because then it's done. Then it's good enough, then it's gone through the process, because here's where we can get hung up. In editing. Some people never leave editing in the book, the movement, the impact that's supposed to be created never exists, because it's sitting on a shelf collecting dust instead of sitting out in the world, collecting change and inspiring change and moving people and shaking people's trees. So there will not be space. There will not Be room there will not be opportunity for this book to sit, this book will see the light of day and we have a timeline. And that timeline is May 31. And that timeline scares me a little bit. That timeline is, uh, okay, you're gonna have to put this together. And you're gonna have to do this because while I'm going through this process, there are delays, there are miscommunications of I sent stuff in two weeks ago. And I'm getting notifications two weeks later that my documents aren't in. And we're having to work through that and go on this timeline starting to feel tight. There's personal life that happens, because our lives are still moving, there's a business that still needs to get run. There is I've been pretty open about this. There's therapy that's happening on the side. There's an ADHD diagnosis that we're going to talk about in the fall on this podcast, there's a lot of stuff that's coming at me and that he's using to build me and to refine me and to get me ready for what's next. And it's all happening concurrently. It's all happening together. And that feels feels like a lot. It feels sometimes like too much. It feels like here's Bertha, my inner critic showing up, maybe you should just push the book launch back. Maybe you should just postpone it. Maybe you should wait until some of this storm that it feels like you're in calms down. And you know what I say to Bertha. Thanks, sweetie. Thanks, thanks for showing up. You know what? This storm that I feel like I'm in right now. God is holding me in it. And I'm in the center of it, and it could swirl around me. And it can feel like there is all kinds of crazy happened and all the way around, but I will not be moved. I will not and I will allow him the room to move. And to get this done on time, I will not stand in the way and I will not create obstacles. I will do my best to not create obstacles because our ego is crafty. Our ego is sneaky, our ego does things that we're not even aware of sometimes. But I will do whatever I can, in active obedience. To get this done on time, on his timeline, in his timing, and the stuff I can't do, he's gonna fill in the gaps. Because he always does. Here's what we're up to. Next week on the podcast, we get to start talking about launching a book, which Oh, my goodness, is there a lot to talk about there. But we're going to start talking about planning that out and the process of that and a behind the scenes of that. And this is going to be fun, because unlike some of these episodes, where it's really a reflection, we get to go through lunch while I am in it. So welcome to crazy town. And it's gonna be an adventure and I'm glad that you're gonna join me for it. So stay tuned for next week, when we jump into that and all of the moving pieces that exist and are possible, and how I'm drilling that down and breaking it down and creating something that will set this up for as much impact as I can while still trusting that we can have one of those like pay here hold my beer God moments where he shows up and he does stuff and he moves and it's beyond what I could have created from Virtual hugs. I hope this episode triggered something in you and got you thinking about your next growth curve. Make sure to check out the show notes for more details and links to resources or people that we've mentioned today. And make sure you hit follow or subscribe and if you have a hot minute leave an awesome review. I would be so beyond grateful. Until next time, be to much DARE YOU