by Joe Taylor
As obsessed as I’m sure some of us are with our writing projects there are times when art has to take a back seat to life. When I dropped off the manuscript of my radio book for my friend Jo Scheier to read and critique I had no idea that the coming weeks would be filled with pain and worry for her, and for all of us in the Writer’s Block Party who care about her.
Jo isn’t only a talented and skilled wordsmith, she is our mentor, our inspiration and encouragement to ‘keep on writing’. It never ceases to amaze me that she gives my work, so very pedestrian, rough cut, a second read. I don’t know if Jo has ever written a mystery, but she starred in a medical thriller that came precariously close to having an unhappy ending. But, there’s Irish tough behind that cool unflappable demeanor, and she fought through her ‘troubles’ and is well on the mend.
So, this past week I drove out to Fernwood, the wooded retreat she shares with her beloved husband, and my buddy, Ray, and picked up her Beta report.
I almost had trouble picking it up. I expected a page, Jo wrote 7 pages single spaced of detailed instructions on my misuse of punctuation, over use of ellipses, advice on sentence structure and fragments, and inconsistencies in how I spelled or referred to everything from the decades to whether a microphone is a mic or a mike. I initially felt chastened and embarrassed.
Even though I had honors English in high school. (I liked the parts about words and interpreting stories and writing. I goofed off during all that other stuff, like diagramming sentences.) I was embarrassed to realize that I have been sending out pieces to publishers that flag my technical inadequacies. Although some have been published. But, I realize that if I’m going to be submitting a whole book and expect it to be taken seriously it is going to have to be as technically correct as possible.
I wish I had had Jo as my English teacher. The tone in her critique was instructional and encouraging. There was no hint of “well, you should have known this”. Yes, if Jo had been my teacher I might today understand how to diagram a sentence. Amazingly, she corrected the technical errors in every one of my 50 pieces. Through osmosis I am learning some rules I should have learned back in high school.
My radio book is a collection of individual pieces. Some were written as long as 10 years ago, some within the past couple of years since I joined the writers group. A chunk of them were banged out in about two months time after I was convinced by my writing friends to write a book about my 60 years in radio.
My initial intent was to arrange them in a rather random order, taking care to alternate more serious explanatory pieces about the radio industry with some very off beat, sometimes darkly humored pieces about people I’ve worked with in the business. I’ve also written a few very personal pieces about my life in radio, overlapping into my personal life and background.
As my Beta reader, Jo discovered repetition, describing the same era of my career in different pieces or talking about the same aspect of the business in two pieces. She did me a huge favor in pointing out that the reader would have trouble following my stories and trying to place them in some coherent chronological order. From this came her most important suggestion-make the book a memoir, rather than a collection. A suggestion I have embraced.
Jo (bless her heart) took the time to critique every one of my 50 pieces, highlighting strong points, wondering about consolidating a few, maybe dropping one or two. She gave me suggestions on which piece should follow which to give the reader a better ride. And, unbelievably, she went through every piece, every page, offering suggestions both technical and creative. She has always stressed that this is ‘my’ book. I kept that very much in mind, especially as I considered some of her suggested creative edits and changes.
I have begun the lengthy process of re-writing and so far I seem to be agreeing with about 65% of her suggestions, but there are some changes that, in my opinion, fundamentally change what I thought it was important to say in the way I wanted to say it. But, whether I agree or disagree with Jo’s suggestions I find that just thinking about what she’s saying is beneficial. It sometimes leads me to go off in a direction I hadn’t thought of before.
The first thing I did after digesting Jo’s report was to rearrange the order of my pieces chronologically to make this a memoir rather than a collection. My process will then be to piece by piece correct my technical (punctuation, fragments, run ons, etc.) errors and rewrite, when necessary. In doing this in chronological order I will be able to pick up when I have introduced and defined various radio industry terms, like FCC, AP, and know to delete or downplay them in subsequent stories. It will also allow me to reduce redundancy in referring to the same person or situation. It will make for a cleaner read that moves along better for the reader.
When I have completed the rewrite I’ll hand it over to Patty Zion, another member of our writers group for a final quick edit to bring it up to snuff and in conformity in terms of format and structure. I am told that these are indicators to a publisher that you are not a total amateur. After that I will face the decision of how to attempt to get the book published. This has always been the deepest of mysteries to me.
Jo finally laid it out for me. The options will range from finding an agent to submitting a proposal and partial manuscript to a publisher who accepts unsolicited manuscripts to self publishing, which I have already decided doesn’t suit me. But, before I get to the point of submitting I have many long hours of writing to craft this into a book that people will want to read.
I can’t thank Jo Scheier enough for getting me to this point.
Book in Progress, Part 1
The Process: Book in Progress, Part 2
