In Writing the Journey, I write about writing. I share my travel and personal experiences through writing in a lot of contexts, but I also strive to achieve more as a writer. This is where I reflect on that process.
I know that a lot of people believe that writers just sit in a room with the door closed and then magic happens and suddenly they are making millions of dollars.
And none of that is true. Not even a little bit. Not the working solo, not the sudden magic, and not the millions of dollars.
My first draft, in most ways, did happen in a closed room. I had written and hit publish on blog posts that I then sent out into the world, but there was so much more work that I could have done on those pieces. Putting them all together in Microsoft Word and then Google Docs was the more work that I needed to put into the pieces to weave them all together.
I then put together a team of ten people to read my beta draft, the heavily revised second draft of work that had already been put out into the world with a much smaller audience than I would like to admit. I made sure that my team included people I trusted to be honest with me but also people from a variety of backgrounds who could give me important feedback on different points of a book of memoir-style essays.
My beta team included one male friend from our years in Houston, two former teaching colleagues (one who is also my editor for another project and my Lit Think partner), one friend from college who has been reading my work since we took two writing classes together as undergraduates, another college friend, two former students in different adult life stages, two internet friends, and another friend from Houston whose two children were in my classes.
I shared the beta draft with them via Google Docs and then set up a private Facebook group for the beta team for communication and discussion.
I started by addressing the “small” concerns, the simple fixes and additions that answered questions asking for clarification. I had selected 10 people who knew me in very different contexts. Some knew a lot of my story, some only knew a little, and they all were there to help me find the blind spots in crafting a book of essays about my own life.
And what happened?
We completely changed my title. It went from Accepting the Unexpected Journey: Essays on Change, Growth, and Seeing the Beauty in the Mess to Embrace the Journey: Learning to Grow When Life Doesn’t Work Out as Planned. I’m very happy with the title, but still open to making adjustments as necessary.
We moved chapters around, they found redundancies that I couldn’t see from my biased perspective, and I added information where we all agreed it was necessary. Small typos that I couldn’t see on my second (more like third) read-through got fixed and formatting issues were addressed.
To say that I’m thankful for their unpaid volunteer labor is an understatement.
Writers cannot write alone if they want to make their work consumable for others. They need to be pushed to cut, add, and elaborate where necessary. We write for more than an audience of one and we need friendly faces to tell us what we can do to make our work better.
Giving your work over to others for deep analysis and criticism is a terrifying venture. You know how you feel about your very personal work, but the fearful wait to see how others will respond is probably what stops most people, including myself, from attempting to publish their writing in the first place.
And yes, I’m suffering from serious imposter syndrome right now.
But I’m looking forward to the final go-ahead from the team after this weekend, to printing out the beta draft and pouring over a third draft on paper before returning to the computer for “final” edits.
More updates to come after I work on the third draft.
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I love reading about and learning from other writers' processes--thank you for sharing. One question: 10 readers seems like a lot. Did you find that to be optimal in the end? Or did it end up adding any contradictions and confusion to the editing process?
I absolutely love that you have this kind of writing team!