139: July Q & A

 

It's our monthly Q&A episode! Topics discussed this month include:

  • getting better at grammar & knowing your sentences are correct 3:49

  • what order the types of editing should be done in 9:52

  • how I found my agent 13:43

  • the decision to not share my daughter online 16:03

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JUly Q & A

Hello, welcome to your big creative life. Welcome to our July q&a episode. If you can not tell by the sound of my voice, I'm a little sick. We flew to Minnesota last week and it was okay. We survived it with Audrey. It was her first flight. She's nine months old. And I was a nervous wreck about it like I've shared in the podcast last week. But we did it. Y'all sent in some great tips that I asked on Instagram for some tips. And that really helped. We gave her a bottle at takeoff, a bottle at landing. We had some new toys, we had lots of snacks, just all this stuff that really helped.

 

I think what was challenging on the flight to Minnesota is that she was too tired. She got up from her morning nap. And then we had like four hours before we were on the flight and she would just was too tired by that point. So she got kind of fussy and squirmy. But then on the flight back home on Sunday, it was much better because she wasn't as tired. She still only slept like 40...45 minutes both times. But, uh, well. The other thing that worked well is having on the flight home, Sam and I were in aisle seats. So that helps because we could just pass her back and forth. And she could watch people coming down the aisle. She's at this age where she's like, really curious and just like, wants to watch people and see what they're doing. So that helped to is entertainment.

 

Um, and the bummer about the trip is that we got sick, Audrey got COVID, which was not obviously in the plan, and honestly, it's so crazy, y'all. She had like a little bit of a runny nose. And I would never have thought COVID because it's July. I mean, I just yeah, I never would have thought I never would have tested her. But then we got a message from her daycare that someone had been in the classroom last week and tested positive and we were like, Oh crap. So we tested her and she was positive. So it her symptoms were mild, she never got more than that stuffy nose, the congestion and she was sleeping more than usual. She was definitely tired, you could tell and she also had an ear infection.

 

We took her into urgent care, because we had called the pediatrician here at home and, you know, told her that we were traveling and she's like, Yeah, why don't you just take her in urgent care just to make sure. And I had noticed Audrey pulling on her ear a couple of times. And so ask them to look at her ears and turns out she also had an ear infection. But we caught it before it became too painful, I think so we got some antibiotics for her. She's such a trooper, I mean, she flew to different place, was sleeping in a different environment was sick with COVID and an ear infection and still slept pretty, like almost perfectly. And was just like a happy girl, which was great.

 

And I am still, I'm through the worst of it. I'm not contagious anymore. I'm not positive, but I just had this cold, it feels like it feels like a cold with an extra level of tiredness. So yeah, I'm just hoping that that is done soon. Okay, we don't have a ton of questions this month. I believe we have four but I'll check my list. And just a reminder, if you have questions that you want me to answer for next month's podcast episode, you can submit your question at the link in the description of this episode.

 

Alright, first question. I feel like the more I learn about grammar, the worse I get at it, because I second guessed myself. So how do you know the sentences are correct? First of all, I just want to say this is super common. A lot of people really feel like they struggle with grammar. This is something that is, at least in us, it's just the education system. I've heard from lots of people that they're there. It's just a mixed bag when it comes to English education and grammar. So if you feel like you didn't go to get education, or it's just been decades, since you were taught any of this stuff and you're rusty and you don't really understand it, that's totally normal. It's... you're not alone.

 

So don't let that stop you from writing or from feeling like you can be a good writer because you absolutely can. Being a good writer is not just can you write a perfect grammatically correct sentence. There's more to it than that in terms of telling a good story. So I just want to say that first of all. First up, there are tons of resources online and in the form of like content or classes that you can take. If you go on Coursera and just search grammar, English grammar, whatever it is that you want to learn. You can find a course that's either free or very inexpensive that you can take, it can be something just super quick like an overview or refresher. Or if you want to deep dive and you really want to work on your understanding of grammar, you can take a class that has that is more intense that has a lot of different modules on different topics, etc.

 

Also, you can check out there are creators on Tik Tok and Instagram and everything that give grammar tips and talk about things. One account that I follow that I love I followed her for fees for a few years now is Miss James her handle is I am that English teacher. So she posts just educational content about grammar. And I just think it's so fun to see her do that. So yeah, you can you can check things out that way as well. And then the other thing to remember, I talk a lot about reading as a writer, or wait, yeah, reading as a writer. And I think this extends to looking at sentence structure as well.

 

Now, when you're reading a book for fun, obviously, you're not like gonna learn from it in the same sense that you would if you took a class or did a workbook or something like that, because when you're reading, they're not going to tell you what the terms are for things you're going to be like, it's not like they're like, Oh, well, this participial phrase has to be written this way because of this. And it has to be past perfect tense because of this. And, but once you start to look at sentences and how they're structured, it's like it starts to become more familiar. Now, of course, there's this you do this with the understanding and the the trust that the work has been edited and is correct, I guess we can't always assume that you can't guarantee that if you're if you're reading a book, but that's something to keep in mind too. And then there are tools obviously like Grammarly or pro writing aid, that you can use to check as a check for your own writing.

 

And this is helpful, especially if working with a copy editor, or someone to help you polish your manuscript is not a financially feasible option for you, which I know it isn't for a lot of people and that's I understand that. So I think that something like Grammarly or pro writing aid, look, they're not perfect. They're better than nothing. I did an experiment I want to say I don't know year or two ago, and I wish I could remember which one it was I honestly can't remember. I think I talked about it on the podcast. So maybe I could go back and see but yeah, it was either pro either pro writing aid are Grammarly, one of those services, I signed up for an account and I put in a piece of writing because that I knew had errors of mine that I wanted to see. I wanted to see what it would do with it, if it would catch everything what the suggestions would be etcetera, because I edit and write in Microsoft Word and Microsoft words editor will suggest things to me sometimes that I'm like, what? Why would you know, it's based on a it thinks that it's had it has an understanding of what you're trying to do. But that's not what you're trying to do.

 

And so the suggestion is wrong. And it was the same thing with whatever service I tried either pro writing aid or Grammarly. It did catch some things. It caught some typos. It had me insert commas in some places that were correct. So that's why I think it's better than nothing. But it wasn't perfect. It did suggest some things that were just not correct. So yeah, I think those are good tools to use for sure. But yeah, I think it's just a matter of like you working on your understanding if you want to working on your understanding of grammar and starting to understand sentence structure and verb tenses and a subject, verb agreement and all these different things. Sending your writing through something that can help flag those errors. And also, at the end of the day, like just trusting that if you have a stray comma in a place that it doesn't need to be, that is not going to make or break your book. Like the reading experience. If you have one typo in your book that's actually doing pretty good.

 

 I forget what the standard acceptable rate is, uh, for typos and books, but even published books that are traditionally published, that had been through multiple editors, multiple rounds of editing still have errors, and people talk about that all the time. And it's because it's just very hard to catch every single thing. So again, if you've got a stray comma, a stray misspelling, like it's not the end of the world and so, yeah. Next question.

 

The order of revisions slash edits, developmental and such, you recommend if planning traditional publishing? So my answer for this in terms of the Order of Operations for editing is actually going to be the same no matter what if you want to publish this yourself, if you want to have a submit it to small presses, if you want to go down the road of trying to get traditionally published, it's all the same. So developmental editing is always the type of editing that should be done. First. This is the type of editing where the person gives you feedback on the story on characters plot, conflict, dialogue, pacing, etc.

 

And presents like suggestions for improvement. I have a form of developmental editing that I offer that's called a manuscript evaluation is a similar thing, you always want to do that first. Then the next thing that comes up is either line editing or copy editing, depending on what you are, what service you're doing. So line editing fixes the, or suggests rather polishes, the actual writing itself. So it looks at sentence structure is is there a way that this can be worded differently? For clarity? Can you word something this way to evoke more imagery to bring different sensory things into it? Can you say this word instead, because it's a little bit stronger? Can you say this word because you use that word two times in the last sentence.

 

It's all that really nitty gritty like prose stuff, it's helping you make the writing better. And then copy editing fixes the grammar, punctuation, spelling, subject, verb, agreement, verb, tense, etc. And then proofreading is the last final step that some people do if you before you are publishing it yourself, you do proofreading, but if you're if you're going down the road of traditional publishing than most, then proofreading really isn't necessary. So that's the order of operation developmental, then line editing, then copy editing. And the reason for this is it doesn't make sense to clean up things like grammar, word choice, stuff like that really, really detail, like line level stuff, if you're going to make changes to the story.

 

This is why I when I work with people, I always say copy editing should be like the very last thing, you should not make more changes to your story after you get it copy edited by someone. Because again, it's like the editor has gone through the entire manuscript, cleaned up typos, cleaned up all those things. And if you write more, if you write additional pages, if you make big changes to the story, then all of that stuff is not going to be edited. And you can hire the copy editor to do that, again, you can do another round, but it just makes most sense and is most efficient. To do it the way that I suggest. I have clients who hire me for both types of editing, where they book a manuscript evaluation, and copy editing with me, and I give them the option. I say, hey, I can do both at the same time, I can give you suggestions on the story and clean up the grammar as I'm going through.

 

But it works best, I recommend doing them separately. And most people go that route, where I do the manuscript evaluation first, and then based on my feedback, they make changes to the story and then resubmit it back to me to clean up the grammar and do the copy editing and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, that's the order of operations that I recommend, I think it just helps you get the most out of working with an editor. Now, obviously, I will say that's in an ideal world, all of us would have the funds to do developmental editing, or remain script evaluation, then do line editing, then do copy editing, then do proofreading. But I know that's not possible financially for a lot of people. So it does depend on on what your what you have available to spend. If you are getting BETA readers do that first definitely do that first, then the editor steps in and does their work. Yeah. Okay. Next question.

 

Can you talk about how you found your agent? Yes, happy to do that. I do have a podcast episode that goes in depth into this that I recorded like a year and a half ago when I signed with her in the fall of 2022. So definitely check that out if you want the deep dive. But basically, I queried again, after I left my first agent. And I left my first agent like spring of 2022. So I queried basically like May through September, maybe. And I just gathered a list of agents that I thought would be good fits for my for my book. It says it was a psychological thriller. And so I looked at agents who represented that genre, and also agents who were active who may were making deals. In the space I looked at Publishers Marketplace, I looked at manuscript manuscript, that can't talk, manuscript wish list, and a few other resources to compile my list of agents. And then I just started querying.

 

And interestingly, Molly Glick, who's my my agent, she was not on that initial list because I thought that she didn't represent thriller authors. But then I saw something online, maybe like in August after I've been querying for a few months that said, she, that told me she was open to this. So I was like, Okay, I'll query her. And I at that point, I'd had a number of full requests out, but no offers yet. And so I was continuing the process. And so I submitted my query letter to CAA creative artists, agents agency, which is where she Creative Artists Agency, y'all, I'm sorry, I'm really having trouble talking. And then their process is you would submit it through Submittable, which is their, their tool that they use. And then if they liked your premise, if they liked your query letter than if they were interested, they would ask to see the manuscript. So I did that. And submitted my manuscript, because I got a request from it for it after submitting my letter, and then probably a month later, Molly reached out to me via email, and said she wanted to get on the phone to talk about it. And she offered me representation. So yeah, that was how I found her.

 

Okay, last question. Sorry, I closed my list. Let me okay. Do you ever share pictures of your baby? Or do you keep her offline? I'd love to know how to navigate this in the future. I don't share pictures of her or videos of her. I might have a few pieces of content where you can see her and I like put a little sticker over her face. But even that is pretty rare. Yeah, I've made a decision that I'm not going to show her on social media. I mean, really, it's Sam and I, because we're her parents. But, you know, I basically told him like, Hey, I don't want to share any pictures. And he was like, yeah, totally, I agree. Because he doesn't create content.

 

This is something that I've actually changed my mind on pretty drastically in the last few years. A few years ago. You know, obviously, I didn't have a baby yet a few years ago, but I would have if I did, I would have been like, Yeah, I'll share a few pictures of her. I never, I would have never made her the focus of an account or anything, but I would have just shared her because I would be sharing my life. So of course, I would just like pop a picture of my baby in every once in a while. But since Tik Tok... and since a lot of the things that I've seen on there, it's become clear to me how big of an issue this actually is just with concerns around privacy and consent.

 

I'm mom uncharted is a great account that I came across on tick tock who talks about this, and she does a lot of educating because people just aren't aware. I mean, this was not a conversation people were having 10 years ago, even five years ago, I feel like this was not as much of a concern, not as much of a conversation. And so like a lot of people, I just thought, what's the harm, like, it's not like I'm posting like naked pictures of my baby. So like I didn't, I wouldn't have thought there would be a problem. But I just feel like I know too much. Now. I know how easy it is for innocent pictures or videos or whatever to get taken the wrong way by the wrong people how easy it is to manipulate those things.

 

And there's also just the whole thing of consent. I mean, I babies and kids cannot consent to their life. Even if it's only in a small capacity, they can't consent to be put on the internet. And it's like, anytime I see content on Tik Tok now, because that's where I do the majority of my scrolling. Let's be honest. Anytime I come across content on tick tock that features like a baby or kids who are under the age of 18. I scroll past it immediately. Because I don't want to, I don't want to watch it. Not that I really enjoy it. Like I love content with cute babies. It's so fun. But yeah, it just, it just feels wrong now that I know more about this topic.

 

And it's like,I don't know. It's messy. And I'm probably giving you more context than you wanted. But yeah, I just think it's an important conversation for you to have, whether you have kids,  or you want to have kids in the future to think about how you want to handle this, because it is a big issue. And it's going to affect these kids a lot in the future. We're only now starting to see the repercussions of this as like the original kids that were being featured on social media come out, come into adulthood. And look, you could say like, Well, I'm not a huge account. You know, I'm not a family vlogging channel.

 

So like, why does it matter? And I could say the same thing. I'm not a massive account. It's not like I have 3 million followers. It's not like people are following me because they're interested in every single aspect of my life. But still, it still just doesn't feel right to put her online. I talk about her obviously y'all hear me talk about her. I talk about my life as a mom, but it's more centered on me. So yeah, I would just say have a conversation with about about it with your partner if you have one or two Just do some, some research and think about it for yourself so that you can make an educated decision and go from there. So, yeah, and it's hard. It's hard, y'all.

 

I will say it's very challenging because she's so cute. And sometimes I'm just like, oh my god, I love her so much. And she's so freakin cute. And she's doing this adorable thing. And I really want to share it with y'all because I know that you would enjoy it. And you would love seeing her because she's so cute, but I just Oh, I can't I can't do it. So it is hard. Yeah, especially as like she's really starting to Oh, I just Oh, she's so cute. She's so cute. Her cheeks and her butt can't do it can't do it. Yeah, it's tricky.

 

But again, just just do some research. Think about it. Have a conversation with your partner and decide what y'all think is right for you. So, okay, that is all the questions that we have for this month. And again, if you want to submit a question next month, you can just go to the link in the description of this episode, and I will catch you all next week. Thank you so much for listening.

Katie Wolf