I’m here today with Jennifer Silva Redmond, an author and editor. She is very excited about helping people achieve their publishing goals. Welcome, Jennifer.
Jennifer: Hey, Lisa. It’s great to be here.
Lisa: Why don’t you let us know how you got into this writing and editing kind of wacky world?
Jennifer: Well, about 35 years ago, I was an actor living in New York City, which means, of course, I was waiting tables and I came back to San Diego to visit my family, ran into my old boyfriend, Russell. We decided to get married like you do over a weekend. And the next thing I knew, we were taking off on a 26 foot boat for a thousand mile voyage to Cabo San Lucas.
So that’s the subject of my new memoir, which comes out in September. And during that year, I discovered I still loved writing, which I’d been doing all my life, and that it gave me just as much. There were as many rewards and enjoyment found in performing on paper, as it were, as opposed to performing on stage.
And I also enjoyed the fact that I could do it from anywhere, which of course, is still true right now. I’m on my boat in Washington and we’re doing that. So both of us work from the boat. Still 34 years later. So yeah, well, I really enjoyed working on other people’s stories in books and I enjoyed working on my own writing.
So in that first year, I really kind of became a writer. And as soon as we got back to San Diego, with our subsequent voyages on our boat, I ended up working for a publisher and worked my way up over a period of years to being editor in chief of Sunbelt Publications in San Diego, who I still work with.
I worked on other people’s books, editing other people’s books, also I’ve worked with the Southern California Writers Conference in San Diego for many years, teaching people about editing their own work and also how to work with an editor.
I think there’s a sort of a mystery about what editors do and whether people really need an editor. And, of course, the answer is, yes, you do.
Lisa: You needed to get an editor for your own book. So how did you go about that?
Jennifer: Well, luckily, my book is being published by rebooks of Toronto, Canada. So I had a publisher and she assigned one of her editors that she works with, Deanna McFadden, who was wonderful. And I think part of what was so challenging is that I had been working on the book for 25 years. I mean, off and on I’d been working on polishing it.
I had some pieces published as just individuals. And I would work on them individually. But I had just kind of recently, maybe two years ago, put it together in a form that I thought worked as a book. And so I started working with Deanna and she said, I love this, I love this. Now you need to tell me more about this and you need to explain better about this part of sailing, or you need to explain more about the geography of Baja, or you need to explain or fleshed this out more.
So she would definitely tell me things that even though I’m a structural editor, I could not see it in my own work, which is very common in there was so much that was in my head that I was filling in and I would read it. And that’s something that’s very common, especially in memoir. But it happens in fiction of all genres as well.
The author knows what they’re saying. They can envision the world or their memories of what happened, and they’re filling that in. And the editors, they’re saying, No, it’s not on the page, it’s just not on the page, it’s in your head. So now you need to, you know, flesh this out, bring this more to life, make this more active.
And those were the things she was telling me, all the things that I tell authors all the time in my in my day job. So it was fun to be on the other side of it, but also quite a challenge.
Lisa: Did you have any squabbles?
Jennifer: Not really. I think there was one time that there was one chapter that was a lot about music, which is a big thing for both of us. And she kept saying, there’s no story here. It doesn’t have to do with the rest of the book. And I kept saying, no, but I love it. And it’s the old kill your darlings.
Eventually I had to say, She’s right, it really doesn’t belong. So I was able to take little elements from it and add that to other chapters. But it really wasn’t part of the of the story arc, the larger story arc, nor was it as a chapter that rewarding to anyone but me. And so I had to learn that had to go.
But basically it was she and my editor, Rebecca, both got the book right away. They got to know what I was trying to say with it. And they just loved it. So that was a huge help. Of course, when somebody saying, I like it now, just give me a little more of this or a little more of that.
And then once I would flesh things out, of course, we’d go back in and shape them so that they fit, they became chapters that led one to the other and told a cohesive story in the end, you know, so that there was a structure to it. As I say, that I can do that with other people’s writing, but apparently I couldn’t do it with my own very well.
Lisa: So that must have been interesting being on the other side. Now, that you’ve done that, are you going to change anything when you go to work with other authors?
Jennifer: You know, I think that she and I work together a lot. Like I work with authors. I mean, I try and find their strengths and play to those strengths. I think every book, like every human, is its own entity. So you have to look at it as like, okay, I’m coming in with my template of what I do.
There may be a sense of the way you work with people, but basically each book is going to tell you how it needs to be told, if that makes sense. Sounds a little woo woo, but every book needs to be told in the way that suits that cast of characters, as it were, the setting, the genre, the, you know, who it’s directed to, the readership.
You could write the exact same book in the same setting for different audiences, and it would become a completely different book. So how I work with people is very much read it and think about is this coming across as well as they can. And I like to use the metaphor that people are broadcasting and I’m in there trying to tune out the static, trying to make their voice come through as clearly as possible.
I don’t want anybody to be writing in my voice, and I don’t want to come in and say, this is how you should write. It’s more, I get what you’re doing, but this isn’t coming across or this chapter is getting in the way of the progression of the book. It needs to go somewhere early or later. You know, those things that get in the way of the of the clear story that you’re trying to tell.
I’m not even talking about copyediting at this point, which is a whole other thing. But I’m talking about content and structural editing, where the pieces of the puzzle need to go together in a certain way to tell the story effectively. And of course, as you say, being on the other side of it, I would go, Oh, yeah, why didn’t I see that?
But once again, it’s very hard to work on your own work because you’re filling it in and filling it in with hundreds of days that went into those 40 chapters. So lots is left out, but it’s all in my mind and in my memories. So it’s very hard to read something without all of that coming through and kind of confusing, diluting it in some way that somebody else is reading it.
Lisa: But then there’s the copy editing, too. My last podcast guest said how a client of hers brought her a book for publicity, he said was perfectly edited. She spotted a couple of mistakes in there. So she sent him to a an editor that she had worked with before, who found like 800 errors.
Jennifer: Welcome to my world when I read books and I just read one. And it was published by Simon and Schuster. So it’s not a schlocky publisher. It was full of errors. Full of errors, I mean, from wrong placement of commas to literally the wrong word, poor instead of pour or peek instead of pique. I mean, just like any copy editor would have caught them.
Definitely a challenging part of this for me because I’m so incredibly picky, you know, and of course, I want as an editor, I want something out there that’s going to represent me really well and not be, you know, full of errors, of course. So that was really quite a challenge.
We went back and forth quite a bit and even like two weeks ago when it was going to the to the printer, I was still finding things that were bugging me, so I would go, Can I just get this change? One more thing. I read the audiobook for it and in a recording studio in Seattle, and while I was reading, I was finding things that were still wrong, little errors.
And I was going, Oh my God, this is terrible. I’ll never stop finding these errors. And she said, Don’t worry, if something’s really bad, we’ll fix it. And if not, we’ll fix it in the next printing and it’s like, Oh, I don’t want something out there that isn’t 100% perfect. But that’s the nature of a collaborative art form.
It’s never going to be perfect, but you want to try and get it as perfect as possible. So for people who want to self-publish, they have to remember that they have to put on all the hats. I like to say a book never happens slow enough for a publisher or fast enough for an author because authors are already I want the book out.
I want to be doing events. I want to be showing it to my friends and the publisher is going, slow down. We got plenty of time. Let’s make it perfect. Well, in this case, I was the one saying slow down, and she was the one saying we wanted out in September. So that was interesting. But for those who are self-publishing or considering self-publishing, you have to remember that you’ve got to take all of those steps yourself, sit down with a copy, with the content editor and go through those changes that are going to change the structure of the book, the content of the book, how chapters lead to each other,
How they’ve fulfilled the genre, how they work for readers. That story well told. Right. But then after you’ve done those two or three or four rewrites, however many it takes to get it the way you want it, then you’ve got to go through that process again with line editing or copyediting to make sure that each sentence works as well as it can with just the right words, and that each sentence within the paragraph belongs and comes in the right place, and that each paragraph comes in the right place on the page, and that every page, you know, works within that chapter because every chapter is its own little story arc.
So that leaves you wanting more, but also satisfies you. So that’s something that your content editor would do, but that your line editor or in some cases copy editor will do as well. And then there’s the final copy edit for all the little tiny commas versus semicolon or period versus semicolon or dash or all of that persnickety things.
You know, and there’s so many good copy editors out there, there’s no excuse to not have it as good as you can get it.
Lisa: I like what you said about the audiobook, because I have spoken to two people who publish their own books, and that seems to be a really good way of catching things. And yes, matter of fact, the one indie publisher I talked to, he said that’s his final edit is he records his own audiobooks and that will be his final edit because he still catches more errors.
Jennifer: Exactly. Gayle Carline, who you may know, she has been at a number of conferences in Southern California. She’s written seven or eight or nine books. I can’t keep track anymore. She’s got a couple of series. They’re all wonderful, different genres. But she says every time she records the book, then she listens to it with the printout in front of her.
And that was exactly what I did as well, reading it out loud once just for the story. Then the second time with that, with the manuscript in front of me to make sure, am I saying exactly what I want to be saying with those words? And stop and start and start, you know, so that you get that flow even after all those process is to be reading the audiobook from my computer manuscript, you know, on my computer screen.
That’s when I saw some things I hadn’t seen before. I would say not once, but twice reading it aloud with the manuscript in front of you. So incredibly helpful. And it was great. Also, I read it out loud that first time for the flow with to my husband so he was able to say wait, but he could also point out some things like that’s confusing. I’m not sure what you’re saying there, you know, so that was really helpful to see if you have somebody whose arm you can twist to listen to it. That’s such a helpful tool.
Lisa: Yeah. Because and these days too. And also listening without looking at the paper, but listening to it. Also something I recommend and you can do that just by hearing it flat to if you have your computer read it. Word will, you can tell it to read it. Yeah. And just listening to that flat AI voice reading it will help you.
Jennifer: Yes. Because something isn’t helping you to sound more dramatic or more interesting, which a narrator always tries to make it sound more interesting. And I found myself even doing that with my own book, like eliding over a word because I didn’t love it, you know? But I won’t do that. That automatic robot voice will point out all those little things.
Lisa: And some people might not want to do read their own audiobook. But if you do, I’ve been recommending to people that they do take their chapter that they think is pretty much there, take it and try reading it out loud and recording it as if they were going to produce their own audiobook. It’s like, Oh, well, those two characters sound a lot alike. Right. Oh, I need to make these those sound different.
Jennifer: Yeah, exactly. And that’s something that, having worked on editing many books, but in screenplays as well, one of the things that we’re always told is make sure I can tell the difference when someone is speaking even before the dialog tag, even before it says Bob said, I should know it’s Bob talking because the way he talks and it can be very tricky when you’re writing like there are certain people, Aaron Sorkin, everyone loves Aaron Sorkin.
And of course he’s good. But you’ll find, especially in earlier manuscripts, you’ll find that a lot of the screenplays, I should say, are the people sound identical. They’re all witty and they’re all insightful and they’re all incisive and they’re all kind of cynical and they’re all kind of right. And it’s like, who is this? I would not be able to tell, you know, lines of dialog.
So it’s something we have to definitely point out when people are writing a lot of dialog. Is that how can we tell who is speaking? You know, obviously are going to say he said, she said or Mary said Bob said. But even without those tags, how can we tell from the words they’re using who is speaking or how they’re saying it or some gesture that goes along with it?
You know, he ran his hands through his hair, exasperated. And then on the lot, you know, if we know this person is the person in the scene that’s stressed out in a book or in a film, then we can say, oh, that’s going to be Bob, you know. So hints that that that help us to figure that out.
But you’re right we have so many tools now that there’s no excuse for people would say, oh, I don’t know how to do that or I, I can’t read out loud or I don’t like the sound of my own voice or whatever. You know, there’s so many tools you have now to be able to do that.
Lisa: One of the copy editors that I worked with on the book I put out, she’s really good about catching over use of words or, you know, maybe clauses in a sentence that need to be rearranged and all that kind of stuff. But my kryptonite is those homophones and that seemed to be something that she didn’t seem to catch all of them. But what ended up happening is I had some beta readers and I had one beta reader that was really good at capturing homophones. So do you also recommend beta readers?
Jennifer: I definitely do. And actually with most authors, I would say do beta readers before you bring me your manuscript, because a lot of times what will happen is you’re writing and your rewriting and rewriting it again and you’re moving things around it and you will forget that you your hero’s name was Adonis when you started out and then you changed it to D’Artagnan or something, and you’ve literally forgotten and you haven’t been reading it out loud to point that out.
So your beta reader will go now wait who. Oh right. I named him that. Or I always love to tell the story of a memoir where a woman was talking about her life and she had this teenage son. And then halfway through the book, he just disappears. She never mentions him again. And I’m like, well, you know, teenagers are pretty insistently part of your life. I know they don’t just disappear. So, this is something you have to bring this up. What happened to him? Where’d he go? What was going on at that point?
So, yeah, it’s things you know or in a novel, somebody has a dog in chapter one because it’s useful to the author for some reason. And then they forget that character has a dog. Like they don’t, it just disappeared, if they’re off at the dog sitter, that’s an issue to, you know, make it clear. But beta readers are great at that and they’re great at pointing out those things that you did because it was handed to you as an author and saying like, yeah, that’s not going to fly.
So that way when you come to me or to any other content or structural editor, you’re not wasting our time on that, on that low hanging fruit that gives us the opportunity to look much more deeply and look at the not just the Matisse story, but the little layers within them to make sure that it’s as good as it can be.
Because I’m not having to worry about who was Tom again, because before his name was Ben. So those things can be caught by your beta readers. I mean, it was somebody like Gayle who does all of that great work before she brings it to me. That’s great. You know, so it’s your choice how you want to do it.
But to me, beta readers, are you alpha readers, your first beta readers, could be three people that you know and love and they support you. That could be your first readership. And then once you’ve done the rewrite based on that feedback, you could go to another level of beta readers, people who maybe you know from a conference, they’re other authors, but maybe they’re not your best friend or your mom or your spouse or your honey pie.
Somebody who’s going to be a little bit tougher with you. And then once you’ve gone through those passes and done the rewriting based on their feedback, that’s when you want to start spending the money. You don’t want to spend the money. I’m just done with my book. I press send it off to somebody, make it good because you’re going to spend more time and money because more time I spend the more money for you.
So, all those steps, like you say, using the people in your circle and finding those people, and writing groups or events or conferences is hugely, hugely helpful to you.
Lisa: Yes, definitely. I totally agree. I mean, I’ve written a novel and…..
Jennifer: It’s very good.
Lisa: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I’m just saying that I think when I was proofing the audiobook. It was told from a male point of view. So I had somebody else narrate the audiobook. And when I was listening to it, I realized, oh, no, I changed one of the names. And then I’m like, Oh, it’s going to be easier just to have him redo one sections.
Jennifer: Yeah, I was just telling my husband about your book because he loves dialects and stuff, and I said she did it just right. So many people either do too much or too little. And I thought you did it right on. I could hear that voice in my head. So now I’m interested in hearing the audiobook, so maybe I’ll get to hear it again, hear it the first time. That sounds great. Yeah, it was such a cinematic story.
Lisa: Well, thank you very much. Okay, here’s some advice I kind of need, and I’m sure it will help other people. I recently spoke to somebody who called about publishing advice as far as shorter works, should I put them together or publish them separately kind of thing. And I said do you have your team lined up? Do you have your editors and cover designers and stuff? He says oh, well, I don’t need an editor, because he had put out other books in the past. He published other books with his own press, and he said he didn’t need an editor. I’ve run across that before. What do you say when in that circumstance?
Jennifer: You know, I have heard everything. I actually heard an author say I bring out my books on e-books first. And I let all my readers find the errors for me. And then I bring the book to print. And I just thought, what? Why would you want people reading your work that is not in a finished state?
That makes no sense to me. I can unequivocally state there is never been a book that I have read, published by anyone that I have not found an error. And now if that can be true at the level of the big five publishers, where they’re hiring people and paying people good money to edit these books, how do you possibly think that an author who is so close to their own book can be able to tell not only that things that are structurally off or confusing or could be better in terms of the structure of the book and content of the book, but also to be able to see every word for the first time. Because once you’ve read a book a couple of times, that’s exactly why I oftentimes will do a content edit followed by a line edit, but I never do a copy edit for the same author and I tell them I would rather you go to somebody else and I’ll recommend people to them. Because the same thing you talked about with rein versus reign, she pulled on the reins spelled like a queen’s reign.
And I’m saying I wouldn’t see that because I’ve already seen it a couple of times. My eye may just go right over it, whereas a new copy editor is going to come in and say, Oh, she means rein like a horse’s reins in this case, you know, or peek and peak any of those. And I see them over and over and over again in published books.
We don’t see it because we know what we wrote, we know what we meant. So we’re just seeing what we meant to write, not what we actually wrote. So for somebody to say that they can proof their own work and know that it’s error free, it’s unbelievable to me literally unbelievable that could be true because having tried to proof my own work, I know how difficult it is.
You could read backwards and all those little tricks, so time consuming and you still will not find the things that are on another level, content or structural. Because once again, you’re filling things into those blanks that come from your knowledge of the characters or in memoir, your knowledge of your actual life. You’re filling those in and the reader can’t do that.
The reader is just going to read what’s on the page. They’re going to judge it and why somebody would want a book out there for four decades that could have been so much better with a couple more thousand dollars and a couple more months. It just it to me is just such a such a waste of time and money to have spent all the money and all the other pieces like you’re talking about, to put it out there and then have it not be as good as it could be, it just seems a shame.
Lisa: Well, although you are preaching to the choir here, I think you have really proved that writers need editors. So how do you recommend people go about finding editors?
Jennifer: Well, there’s a number of different ways. If you’re at a conference, obviously, talk to people who’ve already published books, who have self-published, have their own team. I love that you said that. I say having a publishing team, I like to tell people, don’t self publish, publish with a team. You know, find those people that are good at what they do.
And I find it funny that a lot of really good editors are not really good at marketing themselves. So sometimes you’ll look for quite a while and then you’ll hear somebody say, Oh, you don’t know Laurie Gibson. You know, she’s the greatest editor. And Laurie, you don’t even have a website. But you know, for example, that’s just something that happens in life and all of the best book editors and designers that I know many of them don’t have websites and don’t promote themselves very much.
So they just get word of mouth. And that’s good. If you’re really good that proves that you really are. So I think there is a million different ways to do it. But, certainly get out and talk to other writers who have successfully self-published if that’s what you’re going to do and or talk to editors.
I always tell people they could certainly go to jennyredbug.com. And you can see people that I have talked about, but my email is on there they can shoot me an email and if I’m not available to do content or other types of editing, I always recommend other people. I know there’s websites out there that will talk about editors in a specific city or in a specific region.
But there aren’t too many that are just like the greatest editors out there, because also there’s a lot of people out there that charge an awful lot and they’re not better than people who charge less necessarily. They just live in New York or Chicago or L.A. and so they notice that they can it’s their prices. And so they do.
I don’t begrudge them that. If they end up with happy customers. But I haven’t seen like a Yelp thing for editing. I mean, that would be great if somebody started doing that. But I definitely know a handful of editors that I’m happy to recommend to people. So, without cluttering this up with reciting a list of names, they’re definitely lots of places to look in your particular hometown, wherever that is. Start reaching out to your local. Of course, in Santa Barbara, the writers conference, San Diego, the Southern California Writers Conference, Los Angeles. I think there were a number of groups that specialize in writers. And, ask your writer friends, certainly on Facebook. I see people do that all the time. They go, oh, I thought I was going to work with so-and-so, but she’s busy. Anybody knows somebody great and they’ll get five or six names right away.
That’s what social media is really good for. The hive mind thing, help me out here, people.
So your book is coming out in September. What are you doing to promote it?
Jennifer: Well, I’m going on podcasts. I just did a couple of podcasts last week. I did an article for a Cruising magazine that specializes in people that sail, and another one coming out in a couple of months. I’ve been doing my own blog. I joined Substack, which I don’t know if your listeners are familiar with Substack, but it’s basically a software set up where you can go on and create your own newsletter that is then delivered to people into their emails, and then people can click on the site from their email and be able to comment with the other people on the substack.
So it’s been really, really cool and if you just Google Honeymoon at Sea, you’ll see it pretty quickly. There isn’t a lot of everything else and honeymoon at sea has to do with some place you’re going to, you know, buy a package to Fiji or something. So you’ll be able to tell quickly which one is my substack and I transferred everything from my old blog over there.
So there’s a whole lot of archives about writing things that I talk about with editing and writing tips. I’m also writing and editing books, so that’s happening at the same time. But I’ve just been doing all kinds of things. And as I said, doing the audiobook was very exciting and somewhat terrifying experience to do and also just been working on all the little marketing things.
Hopefully I’ll get the ARCs of the book. I haven’t even had advance reading copies yet. I’ve been sending people PDFs, but luckily I’ve had a lot of people review it. A lot of people say a lot of great things. So that’s been very helpful to me to be able to put that out there. And for about five hours the other day I was the number one new release in the Hispanic and Latino literature on Amazon.
And I wish they had a California subject line, but they don’t. So, well, they have to work on their keywords, I think. But it’s been a great deal of fun, you know, and talking with people that were on my mailing list for years and years that are like, Oh, you wrote a book? I didn’t even know that.
So they’re trying to rattle the bushes in every way, and I’ll be looking forward to planning something out a bookstore soon. And then, as I said, I’ll be down in San Diego and Southern California at the beginning of next year with the books doing the Southern California Writers Conference and some other writers conferences and have the books with me. So that’ll be very exciting.
Lisa: Yes, that is awesome. That sounds like an interesting journey. This season of this podcast is almost over. So maybe next season I’ll have you back. Tell us about Substack.
Jennifer: I’d love that. Yeah. I think there’s so many different opportunities nowadays to even make money as a writer without being published by a publisher. Substack allows you to charge people if you want to write now, because I’m trying to push people in a very gentle, loving way. Preorders are now like one of the most important things that an author and a publisher have going for them before the book actually hits the bookstores.
My book comes out September 19th, but we already have preorders and have been pushing those for another a couple of weeks. And that’s one of the things I keep telling people. If you’re going to buy the book, please order it now, because that really helps us to get exposure. And when I come back, next time I’ll be able to tell you, yeah, Honeymoon at Sea debuted with this kind of preorders.
I don’t know that yet. But hopefully I have a good story to tell about all of our pushing on all different what’s the phrase keep an equal strain on all parts to try and get things moving in a marketing way. And then, of course, once the book is out, I’ll be doing events, book signings.
Lisa: Well, thank you so much. This has been a gold mine. I really appreciate it.
Jennifer: Thank you, Lisa. I really appreciate you inviting me. And I will look forward to coming back again when Honeymoon at Sea is out.