Contributor: Sally Jane Smith

This article is Part 1 of a three-part series on tackling a professional line edit. Read Part 2 , and Part 3 here.

A Common Writing Challenge

The trouble with writing is that, when you start, you’ll probably think you’re really good at it. And the trouble with first books is that you might feel your manuscript is ready to go out into the world long before it has the wings to fly.

I made both those mistakes.

After a year of drafting in between the demands of adult life and a fulltime job, and another year of revisions, I nudged my work out of the nest. And I watched in dismay as it plummeted to the ground. Four agents sent polite rejections; four others never responded.

For most authors, a first book is a slow and demanding learning curve. Like that fledgling in the nest, your manuscript is likely to require a lot more tending than you expected.

No matter how often friends have told us we should write a book about our lives, no matter how highly our English teachers scored our essays at school, there is a formidable amount for a new writer – and especially a travel memoirist – to learn.

We have to master how to present ourselves as characters whose actions will matter to the reader, how to craft a narrative arc and emphasise the events that switch up the pace of our stories, how to walk the balance between showing and telling.

And we have to be brave, shouting out to the world the personal dilemmas and fears we’d never have mentioned to a casual acquaintance.

In the case of Just One Step: Travels in Greece and the World, I also had to weave two genres – travelogue and memoir – into a smooth fabric. The cloth of my story needed to wrap its readers in a comfortable tale, not snag at the points where the focus changed from amusing anecdotes or tidbits of destination information to thought-provoking reminiscence.

And if that wasn’t enough of a challenge, I had to figure out how to present a narrative set in Greece, when the backstory – which gave the trip meaning – took place in Sri Lanka a decade before.

Taking it as far as you can on your own

Using every self-editing tool I could find, I pruned the text, cutting away deadwood to search for the clean shape of the story. I plucked overused words from the narrative and weeded out memories that slowed it down. I took it as far as I could by myself.

Beta readers gave me excellent feedback. Writers I respected – but who didn’t read or write in my genre – were more critical. Some of what they said made sense in the abstract, but, when confronted with incorporating it into my own work, I hit a wall.

I could hear what they were telling me, but I couldn’t see it.

A Tense Dilemma

And then there was the overwhelming decision over which I’d been fretting for a while. Should I rewrite the entire manuscript in past tense?

The present tense made for a tauter tale. Readers could travel hand-in-hand with me, encountering new experiences and facing life choices as I did. Plus, I could tell the story in fewer words. But, in discussions with booklovers, online and off, I kept running up against two disturbing truths.

One was that the present-tense is an obstacle for many.

The other was that first-person narration – something that’s hard to avoid in memoir – is a deal-breaker for others. Was the combination of both just too much of a burden for these readers to bear? Would they shut the covers before they had a chance to tumble into the story?

I’d gone back and forth on the benefits of present vs. past tense so frequently that I no longer trusted myself to make the decision. I needed a professional to give me expert advice before I undertook that mammoth task.

Spelling and Language Conventions

There was a more technical consideration, too.

Although of course I hoped my book would appeal to a broader market, I’d written it for a specific target audience: Australians aged 35-64 with an interest in Greece, especially female travellers and those who thrive in the world of social media.

I’d learned, however, that if I were to self-publish, I might do better to change my language usage to suit a United States readership. Hundreds of thousands of Australians journey to Greece each year (or did, before COVID-19), but the U.S. accounts for more than three times as many travellers. And while the United Kingdom market is three times greater again, I’d heard that the average U.K. reader is more tolerant of American spelling, idioms and measurements than vice versa.

But, is it cheating?

I still wasn’t certain whether I’d be self-publishing or pursuing the traditional publishing route, although I’d have to decide soon. If I chose to self-publish, I’d be investing in a professional editor. So why not take that step now, even if I was going to try my hand at a few more rounds of traditional publishing queries first?

Engaging with agents and publishers on Twitter reassured me that they wouldn’t consider this cheating. As long as I remained open to ongoing revision and editorial feedback, the investment of time and money in a professional edit would be appreciated as a show of competence and initiative.

Part 2 of this article series: Finding my Editor

About Sally Jane Smith

Sally Jane Smith was injured when the bus on which she was travelling through Sri Lanka suffered a head-on collision. A decade on, she journeyed to Greece in a quest to recover her wanderlust – and proved it is possible for an out-of-shape, middle-aged, female traveller on a budget, armed only with a guidebook and her mother’s 1978 travel diary, to take that single step away from the mass tourism track and experience a remarkable adventure.

Connect with Sally Jane:

• On Facebook: @JustOneStepGreece
• On Twitter: @Just1StepGreece
• On Goodreads: @sally-jane-smith
• On her website: www.justonestepgreece.wordpress.com