147: September Q&A
Free Guide:
5 tips to help you write your book
It's our September Q&A episode! Topic covered include:
how to handle new book ideas when you're already working on something 1:13
if you need to go to college to work in publishing 3:32
how to set editing goals 6:22
how to know when your manuscript is ready for querying 9:43
tips to ensure a strong main character 14:06
my opinion on agents using AI 17:22
helpful reference docs when drafting/revising 23:14
my experience starting a podcast 27:07
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SEPTEMBER Q & A
Hi friend, welcome to our Q and A episode for September, and welcome to your big creative life. I'm Katie Wolf. I'm recording at home today, not my co working space. Edie, my cat is here and wants to say hello. You gonna say hi? But yeah, we got a lot of good questions this month. So we have 123456788, questions. So I'm not going to spend as long on each question as I do when we have only like three questions, but I'm definitely going to answer all of these because I think they're all good and important, and hopefully they will be helpful for you.
Okay, question number one, how do you handle new book ideas when you're already working on a different story? There are two directions that you can go in with this. Number one, there are people who can write multiple things at once. There are people who get lit up and energized by the idea of creating multiple or working on multiple creative projects at once. So if that is you, and you feel like if you have the mental capacity and energy to be working on multiple projects, then go for it. There's no reason why you can't. But if it does feel like, okay, I've really got to focus on this one project, this one book, before I pivot and start working on something new. First of all, I think it's a good awareness that this is happening. But my biggest suggestion is to just, oh, Evie hopped up on the chair. You'll be able to see her if you're watching the video.
Is my suggestion for this is to keep a document on your computer or your notes app on your phone, something like that, where, when you get an idea, dump it on that document, but don't do anything else. Don't spend a lot of time, like outlining and brainstorming or whatever. Just note the idea and then let it go. Because you want to honor the ideas that are coming to you. You want to pay attention to them and keep track of them. Don't just assume that you'll remember them later, but you don't want it to divert your attention away from the book that you're working on. I've talked in the past about shiny object syndrome, which is where as writers, it can be. This can manifest in a few different ways.
But what happens for me, I'll just share my experience with it, is that the first eight to 10,000 words of a book that I'm writing are like smooth sailing, easy peasy. So much fun. And then I hit a stumbling block, and I start to think, maybe this book isn't gonna work. Maybe I should just toss it. And the new idea, the new shiny idea over here, starts to look really appealing. And it can be easy to jump ship and just start the next idea, but then the same thing. I know that the same thing is gonna happen. So it's easy to get distracted by all these shiny new ideas, but just remember that they're still going to be there for you to work on. It's not like they're going anywhere, so, yeah, just make note of them somewhere. Honor those ideas, and then you can come back to it when you are ready to.
Question number two, do I need to go to college to be successful in the publishing industry? I can talk about the freelance editing industry, but I can't talk as much about the traditional book publishing world, just because, even though the title of editor might be the same, there are two very different jobs in very different industries in terms of the requirements, the hiring, The clients that you work with, etc. My sense of the traditional publishing world, like, if you wanted to be an agent or a book editor at a publisher, then you will probably need a college degree.
Yeah, I think that it's kind of a minimum. And it doesn't mean I, like, I don't think you have to have a specific type of degree, although a lot of agents that I have, you know where I've looked at their bio, they have additional training beyond just a college degree. So yeah, I would guess I'm not, I'm not gonna say with 100% certainty, because, again, I don't work in the traditional publishing industry. Oh, George, I don't work in the traditional publishing industry itself, but my sense is you probably do need, at minimum, a college degree for freelancing when it comes to what I do, which is where I work for myself.
Clients hire me on their own. I'm not under contract with a large publisher, or any publisher for that matter, an agency anything like that. Um. I'm leaning towards Yes, but it's not an absolute. I mean, look, if you are someone who is incredibly self motivated and you can take on the classes and the training yourself, like if you want to just do some individual classes and not get an entire college degree, then that might work. It also depends what type of editing you want to do. I mean, if you want to do, like, rigorous academic article type of editing in that academic publishing world, then maybe a degree is more essential.
But I have only once in the years I've been doing this, I've only had one client who asked me about my degree or degrees, so I don't think it's something that really factors into a lot of people's decisions on hiring me, but a degree helped me gain knowledge. So if you're not going to college, then you have to find some other way to demonstrate your expertise and to gain the knowledge, because it's not enough to just be a good reader and love books and then think that you can become an editor or whatever. There's more to it than that. So I'm not going to say absolutely yes it's a requirement, but I will say it can be helpful. So again, those are two very different career paths, and that's just my take on those.
Next question is how to set editing goals. It was much easier to set drafting goals with word counts. Completely understand that, and I'm going to give you two options for how you think about the editing process and how you can break this down into goals along the way. So the first approach is to purely think about like going through your manuscript from page one to the end and editing everything as you go. And in that case, you can do a very similar thing with word count goals, where you are editing 3000 words at a time, or you're editing two chapters at a time, and just kind of tally and keep track of your progress that way, and set goals related to words or chapters that you get through as you're editing.
The other way to approach this is to think about the area that you're tackling with your editing. So for example, the way that I prefer to do editing is a five draft editing method, where you are first initially going through the manuscript and looking for big picture stuff, like rewriting your ending, rewriting your beginning, deleting chapters, adding new chapters, coming up with an entirely new subplot, etc, like big changes to the book. And then next is a main character edit, where you are only looking at your main character. You're not even looking at scenes where this main character isn't present and looking at their characterization like is this person?
They have strong personality? Do they? Is their behavior consistent for the most part? Are they? Is there dialog consistent? Are Am I showing their flaws and strengths and their relationships with other people, etc, so, and then there's a few more edits, rounds of editing, that you go through after that. But the point is that you can break those down into pieces and check those off and have goals related to those things. So if you wanted to break this down, let's say the character edit, where you're just editing your main character or characters, you could easily break it down into like, Okay, I'm gonna go through and just look at my character's dialog for this editing task. So you're almost breaking it down into tasks. Check the character's dialog this main character that is next.
You're gonna check the main characters like internal narration, so if they have thoughts that the readers is has access to what are their thoughts sounding like, and you just break it down so that you have a checklist of things to go through as you're editing that can be a good way to do it as well. So it just depends how you want to tackle it and what's going to be the best approach for you. The reason that I do not go through from page one to the end when I'm editing. And the reason that I don't generally recommend people do that is because if you're fixing big picture things, then it doesn't make sense to go through and clean up individual chapters like starting from page one and really, really get in the weeds with editing.
If things are going to be changed and moved around anyway, it makes sense to get all that big picture stuff done first. But again, everyone has their own editing process, so it might be just a case of discovering what works best for you, doing the chapters, word counts, pages, or coming up with that list and tackling each individual kind of lens of how you're looking at the manuscript, doing that one at a time next.
How to know when a manuscript is ready to send out to agents? This is a great question, and actually, it's funny. I recorded, was it or this morning or yesterday? I recorded a similar video, like a Tiktok video about this, but I was having a conversation with one of my coaching clients about this, about knowing when you're ready to query so this is good timing that you're asking this question. I think it comes down to a few things.
Obviously, the answer is kind of like, it depends, but there are a few guidelines that you need to, like, check, a few guidelines that are helpful when it comes to knowing like things you can check off a list. Okay, so number one, is it finished and is it? Has it been through at least a few rounds of editing that you've done yourself? This does not mean you have to hire an editor, although I do recommend a manuscript evaluation or developmental editing if it's possible for you financially, because that's so important when it comes to querying, but it's not essential.
So no sweat if you can't do that, but at least that you've gone through a few rounds of revision, um, yourself that you're not sending the agent a first draft, that probably that you're not even sending an agent a second draft, you really need to polish it as much as you possibly can, because think about an agent looking at your manuscript. I mean, when you're sending agents to your manuscript, you have one opportunity to show your work to them, and if you send them a first draft, it's probably going to need work. It's probably not going to go well, you're not going to have a lot of full requests, or any full requests, and it's just, yeah, it's just not the best way to go about it, so at minimum, finished, but then also at least a couple of rounds of self editing before you send it out.
Number two, have you shown it to someone else? Again? Doesn't mean have to meet an editor. If that's not in the cards for you. This can be a beta reader or beta readers, critique partner, someone that you know who reads a lot doesn't have to be an official beta reader, but just show it to at least one other person before you query so that, so that they can give you feedback. If there's anything big that you are missing, we are very close to our own work. I talk about this all the time. It's impossible for us to be subjective, and we can easily just not see things. And I know this can be uncomfortable.
I know that this can be scary to open up and put yourself in that position of asking for feedback, but it's essential, and you're going to be opening yourself up when you send it to agents, so you might as well take that first step before, because it could really help you. Your manuscript might not actually be ready. So then this is kind of like that final check, just to make sure before you send it off to people. And then third, do you feel like it's ready? How is your gut feeling about your manuscript, I will say that it is easy to push off querying even when you feel like your manuscript is ready, because we could be stuck in an editing spiral forever.
I mean, I when I think about my own querying experience the first time and then this most recent time, I could have easily spent another, like three years working on both those books, not changing anything major, but just like, tweaking little things here and there. But at some point we have to stop, like, we're never going to achieve perfection ever. No one is and so at some point we just have to be like, Okay, I've taken this as far as it can go. I've let someone else read it. I've done multiple rounds of editing. I feel good about it. Even though it's not perfect, I feel good so it's ready. So this is gonna This isn't one of those areas where like, or one of the guidelines where you just have to be honest with yourself on how you're feeling about it. Some fear is normal. Some hesitate, some hesitation is normal. But if you do a gut check and you sit with it and you are like, actually, you know what? I just don't think that ending is quite ready.
Like, I think I need to tweak this a little bit more. Or I'm not, I'm not sure that my first chapter is really solid yet. Like, I think I need to go back and tweak this part then, then do that. But if you feel like, no that. Like, I've taken it as far as I can. It's not perfect, but I've done everything I can do to make it as good as it can possibly be. Then you are ready.
Yeah, okay, next up any tips to ensure the voice of a protagonist and the essence of that character is strong? Yes, this is one of my favorite things to talk about, because I've worked on, I don't even know how many manuscripts at this point, and I give feedback so often on main characters who need more oomph behind them. And this, this can come out in a lot of ways in the manuscript and the suggestions that I have for people, but I'm going to give you just a few things to look at to make sure that this person is a strong character, not likable, not relatable, but strong, which I love, that you put that in your question.
Okay, so first of all, personality. Does the character have a personality which sounds like a bare minimum kind of thing? But like, can you describe this character? If we were sitting down and you were telling me about your book, can you describe this character? If not, if you have no idea what adjectives to use, that's a sign you need to do some more work on the character. So I'm talking like strengths, weaknesses. What are their relationships like? Are they on this end of the personality spectrum or this end of the personality spectrum? Are they this thing or this thing? Or just, just tell me, like, think of, think about us sitting down in a coaching call or getting coffee or something, and how would you describe this character to me? If I asked you, what are this person's strengths? What are their person's weaknesses? What? What? What flaws does this character have?
Otherwise, what happens, and I see this a lot in client manuscripts, is that a character is just kind of swept along by the action of the book. They're not playing a role in the things that are happening. They are not making decisions. They're not an active participant in this story. They're just letting things happen. They're very passive. So we want to avoid that no matter what genre you're writing and no matter what type of story you're telling, those things are, at minimum, just essential, and they're gonna go a long way to, like, really making your character stand out on the page.
Make sure that you're able to answer those questions, that you could tell me the answers to those things. The other thing that I often point out is motivation. So what does your character want in this book? In this story, what are they working towards? What's motivating them? This can be multiple things. It doesn't have to be one big thing that stays with them through the course of the book. It can be multiple things. What they want can change over the course of the book, like maybe they start off wanting one thing and working towards one goal, but then realizing halfway through that's not actually the thing that they want, but your character has to have agency and has to be working towards something.
I do have a workshop recording that I did, I don't even know when I did the class, maybe like, two or three years ago, called How to create strong, memorable characters. And you can purchase the replay of that. Like I said, at 60 minutes, it's, or I recorded the workshop when we hosted it, and it's, I believe it's like 49 bucks or something. And if you go to my stand store, which is the link in the description of this episode, you'll be able to see the workshops that I have available. So if you want more tips on characters specifically, definitely check that out.
What is your opinion on agents using AI for market comparisons, and my phone's blocking and manuscript overview? Okay, I'm gonna be honest. I don't know a ton about this, so I can just give you my opinion, but it's just my opinion, not really based on a lot of research. I've heard about this online, but I haven't really dug into it. I've heard about, well, actually, not even agents using AI for comps, but I've heard of writers who are querying using AI to find comparable titles for when they're querying. And then I've also just heard rumors about agents using AI, like feeding a manuscript or a chapter or whatever gets submitted into an AI tool in order to review the document and evaluate it.
So the comps thing, I think, is more understandable. I'm very hesitant of using AI for anything I've shared my thoughts on social media and the podcast about generative AI specifically, but I think this is one of those cases where it could be a really helpful starting point. My concern is just that I hope that no one takes that as gospel, like, let's say, let's give us an example here. Let's say that you are going to query and you want to use chatgpt to find comparable titles for your book. So you put a little synopsis in a chatgpt. You're like, Hey, give me two comparable titles that were published in the last two years for this. Make sure that you research whatever chatgpt spits out. I've never done this, so I don't even know what it would come up with, but if this is something that you use AI for just make sure that you're actually researching these books, because you don't know if they're accurate or not, and you would hate to give a really bad comp title in your query letter.
So, but I haven't, I don't, I haven't really heard about agents using this. Again, it if there's a use case for AI in the writing and publishing world. This one seems more on the like harmless kind of end of the spectrum, and could be helpful. But again, it's like the whole ethics of AI. I just there's a bigger issue at play here, but I'm not going to get into all of that. So just for that comp title market, comp market research kind of thing, yeah, I could see that, and I don't have a problem with that specifically. However, I do have more of an issue if agents are using AI to review manuscripts that are submitted for querying, if they're not disclosing that, this is what they're doing, that is my biggest thing with AI. Y'all all of this.
When it comes to if you're using AI to write the book for you, if you're using AI to whatever, you have to disclose that. So if an agent has on their submission page, hey, here's the process. Once you email your sample chapter or whatever to me, I'm going to put it into this tool that will spit out a report for me, and then I'll glance at your chapter, but also look at this report. If that's their what they have on their submission page, or their submission information, then okay, you get to decide if that's something that you want to, I guess, support if you want to query that kind of agent. I would not. I don't want my work fed into an AI tool that I don't know its capabilities, its capacity, especially, I mean, I this is the other thing too, like you don't know how much the agent is relying on that tool to determine the state of the manuscript.
I mean, yes, AI has come so far, but it is limited at this point. It's not as good as a human for this kind of evaluating, at least according to the research that I've done on the capabilities. So I wouldn't want someone to just put all their faith in it and like, not even glance at the actual work itself. So that's the biggest thing I would just I really would want agents to disclose that. If they're not disclosing it and they're doing it, that's a huge red flag for me, like I just don't, I don't think people should be doing that. I actually put something on my website based on a comment that someone made on a Tiktok that I created last week or two, I don't remember when talking about AI, and they were like, I hope that my if an editor I hire like, I hope that an editor I hire isn't feeding my work into AI to help them do their job. And I was like, I've literally never even thought of this.
So I just put something on my editing page, like my editing services. That was like, I do not use any AI tools to help me in evaluating all of the edits, all of the suggestions, all the critique is all me. It's all done by me. So I think that's so important. Yeah. And again, if an if someone is is stating, hey, this is what will happen. I will feed your work into this again, I just, I could see a benefit for it in the sense that would cut down on query response time, because some agents take six months to get or longer to get back to people.
So I guess the benefit, you know, you could argue, well, it's speeding things up. It's helping agents get through their submissions. It's cutting down on the work for them, which, you know, I agents are overworked. That's no see, that's no secret. But I just hesitate about it. I'm just not sure that that's the best way to do it again. Just want to clarify. I'm not an agent. I'm not on that side of it, so I don't know how much this is happening. I don't know of specific cases, like specific agents that are doing this, but that's just my two cents on it.
Um, I think we have two more, yeah, what reference docs do you find most helpful to create when in the midst of drafting, slash, revising? So I'm assuming that this person is asking about reference documents, meaning like keep of keeping track of everything in terms of like outlining, world building, character work, all of that stuff, all the planning stuff that goes into creating a book, when you were drafting and then when you're going through the editing phase and revising your manuscript.
So there are so many organizational tools out there, and I'm sure there's a lot of information on social media or like even YouTube videos that go deep in the weeds with different organizational strategies. What I do is I just have a Word document that is like my story Bible. It's my story dump. Like all of my notes go in there. When any outlining that I do, I'm not a huge outliner. I do a little bit, and all of that goes in there. I have a section on character work. So if I do a character profile that all goes in there. Any research that I've done I will put in there, if I'm researching a city or whatever I'm not. I don't write fantasy, so I don't have to do any like fantasy world building. I do have to do world building in the sense that I'm creating a world in my story that takes place in our world, but it's just different. There's not as much that I world building that have to do overall. And yeah, I just have it broken down by section.
So like outlining any chapter notes, the beats of my story, if I decide to have any character work and then research, and then I'll also. So when I'm editing, I will do one of two things if there's something that I need to fix, but I'm either not quite ready to fix it yet, or I know it's going to be changed later, so I need to circle back to it, or I'm not sure how to resolve it yet, I will put a comment in the manuscript, or I will have, like a dual, like two documents open on my screen when I'm editing. So I'll have my manuscript, and then I'll have this Word doc that's just the story dump, and I will make notes to myself, so like chapter 12, page this, fix this thing, and I'll just have a list of things, of issues to resolve, things I still need to think about, things that have to be changed later, etc.
So that's really my process when it current, when it comes to like a reference document, is just having everything in one place. Again, there are people who get really in the weeds with this and have very color coordinated things with multiple tabs. And I just haven't found it necessary to do any of that, but if you do want a more like a deep dive into that, then please go just do some searching for it, because I would bet there's a lot of content about that, or where writers share their process for how they're keeping track of everything. I'm also going to answer this a slightly different way, just in case you meant something different. If you meant like reference, like guides to writing when it comes to drafting or revising, I can't say I really use one.
I did use save the cat for my second book, but then ended up scrapping most of what I had outlined using Save the cat. So I did have saved save the cat handy when I was working on that in early, the early stages, and so I've just, like referenced that occasionally. And save the cat, if you're not familiar, is just an outlining strategy, and it's a book that just covers all these different beats that you need to hit in your book. And for me, I found it very there was a big learning curve with it. It was not intuitive to me. I had to reference things a lot. I had to look back at things a lot. They give a lot of examples in the book, which is helpful. But yeah, I just for me, it was too much, so I decided not to use it. I'm not using it for this book, but trying to think of what else is helpful. Yeah, I That's it really, in terms of if, if you meant like books that you like consult or anything like that.
Um, I think we have one more question. Let me see. What was your Oh, sorry, I have to move my phone. Okay, what was your experience of starting a podcast? Um, I don't know if I have, after God knows how many episodes, 100 something. I don't know how much I've shared about this, but I did have a podcast before. This is actually my second podcast that I've created. When I started my business, it was called the centered creative and it was like I was trying to do way too many things at once. It was for like, creatives in general, and I would help with writing stuff. I would help people start businesses. I would coach people related to mindset. It was just like, all over the place. And I did have a podcast where I did, like, a few dozen episodes of that, and then I stopped because I wasn't making any money, and it was just not going well.
And so I was like, Okay, I need to get focused here. I need to, like, narrow down my client base and my services, because this is just not working. And so anyways, that that was my first initial, kind of, like foray into it. And then I didn't have a podcast for a year or two. So then when I started this one, it wasn't like I was starting from scratch, but it kind of was because I forgot so much.
I purchased a an online course, kind of a guide for how to start a podcast. It was like 70 bucks, I think at the time. Jenna Kutcher is a big kind of leader in the online business space, and I purchased her podcast course on how to start one. And I knew that I could find so much of this information for free online, but I just wanted it all in one place. And it was helpful to just know, okay, here's exactly what to do, and there were things in there that I hadn't even thought of, so I found it helpful. So, yeah, getting it up and running took some work. And like, there were things that seemed really daunting at the time, like figuring out what microphone to use and figuring out audacity, which is the tool that I record in.
But then once you get over that initial hump, like actually recording it, editing it, like, everything's pretty simple. It doesn't take me too much time to do but. Because I do my podcast in a certain way. I don't edit out pauses, I don't edit out ums, like all that stuff. And the thing with a podcast, you have to have an existing audience built in, or you have to be promoting it heavily, or you just have to be doing a lot to get people to discover the show. Because otherwise, if you start a podcast and you just put it out there and expect people to listen, it's probably not, you're probably not going to get very many downloads. That was my experience the first time around. I just didn't have an audience, I didn't have a following, really to speak of, and I wouldn't get very many downloads per episode, and it never grew over the few dozen episodes that I did.
It's kind of like a website, like you can't just put up a website and expect people to come flooding. So I do think that there's a learning curve. There's a small learning curve with the tech, but then once you get the process figured out, it's not bad, but it is just something where you have to figure out how you're going to get people to listen to it and figure out who your your audience is for it specifically. And there's also the confidence piece of it too, because when I started I hated hearing myself talk. I felt so awkward. I scripted well. I didn't script the episodes like I didn't write out word for word what I was gonna say, but they were pretty heavily outlined, because I was terrified of just pressing record and not knowing exactly what I was gonna say.
So I think there is a, it is a bit of a mindset thing too, of just like feeling comfortable. And it's kind of like creating content honestly, like the more that you do it, the better you get at it, the more comfortable you become. But you just have to feel kind of awkward at first. So yeah, I think, I think starting a podcast has been one of the best things, and I like doing it. I enjoy doing the podcast. I don't get, like, a massive ton of listens or downloads, downloads for it, but I don't really care. I know that it's helping people. I enjoy doing it. And, yeah, it's just not a huge focus of my business right now to grow the podcast like I'm not putting all of my energy and effort into marketing the podcast and advertising and trying to get sponsors and like all that stuff. I'm just not there. Maybe I will be in the future.
But anyways, that's a little bit of extra info beyond starting it. But yeah, that's, that's my experience with it. It's fun. Yeah, it really is fun. And I started recording the episodes. Just a reminder, if you're listening and you haven't followed me on YouTube, you can do that. I record the episodes. And speaking of minimal editing, like I do almost nothing with the YouTube video, I just slap it up there. I know that I could spend a lot more time editing the YouTube video, because on YouTube, it is more important to take out, to have quick cuts, to take out the pauses and the ums and to put text on screen.
But I just, I just don't do that again, because my focus is not really YouTube right now, although, God, earlier this week, I just like, sat up in bed in the middle of the night and was like, oh my god, Tiktok is due to get banned in like, a few months, and I know there's legal challenges and who knows what will happen, but I just had this panic like, oh god, I've got to really hustle on Instagram and YouTube because Tiktok is where I get the bulk of my followers, but so maybe I do need to focus more on YouTube. But anyways, that is all the questions that we have for this month. Thank you to everyone who submitted.
And just a reminder, if you want to submit a question for the October Q and A episode, you can do so at the link in the description of this episode. And the Q and A episode always comes out on the last Tuesday of the month. All right, thank you for listening. Hope you have a fabulous day, and I will talk to you soon. Thank you so much for listening.