Rebecca Wenrich Wheeler on Flexing that Relationship Muscle: The Author and Editor Relationship

By: Rebecca Wenrich Wheeler

For the better part of my adult life, I have edited other people’s work, first as a high school English & Creative Writing teacher, and then as an adjunct college instructor. I tend to provide a lot of feedback, namely because I want my students to reach their capabilities as a writer and researcher. If I didn’t believe the students had the potential to improve, I wouldn’t spend so much time writing feedback.

When my first picture book, When Daddy Shows Me the Sky, was accepted for publication in 2020, it had been a long time since I was on the receiving end of the editing pen. Even though I would have loved to have been published earlier in my life, I am thankful that by the time I worked with an editor on my first book, I had developed a confidence in my own voice that didn’t exist in my twenties. That confidence allowed me to enter this new editor-author relationship as two professionals collaborating rather than a writer with an inferiority complex.

Book editing happens in a variety of ways.  For my two picture books, a single editor went through four revision rounds with me, and my editor served as the intermediary with the illustrator and designer. She was truly my partner through the entire process. My second picture book, When Mama Grows with Me, will be released in Spring 2023. Both picture books are published by Belle Isle Books, an imprint of Brandylane Publishing.

The editing process with my YA novel, Whispering Through Water, was very different. Instead of one editor I had three. Each editor served a different purpose. The first was a developmental editor, then copy and line editors. In terms of the design process, I communicated directly with my publisher at Monarch Educational Services, LLC.  

For me, switching editors through the publishing process was more stressful, because the communication style changes with each editor. I learned that I prefer for the editor to ask me clarifying questions, so I have a chance to extrapolate the intended meaning, rather than the editor making content changes without asking questions. Also, I am turned off by sarcasm in comments, as I personally don’t find that professional. An editor isn’t an author's boss or teacher, rather the editor serves more as a coach guiding the plays to improve the writer’s game. If something isn’t working in the relationship, it’s okay to communicate with the editor about the concern. Or if a particular question or piece of feedback was helpful, tell your editor that as well, which also helps her know how to best communicate with you. 

With each editor change, comes a new relationship to navigate. Though fundamentally, whether I have one editor or three, I just want to know she is as invested in my work as I am. For the relationship to work, the writer and editor must respect each other’s expertise and passion. Respect is reciprocal.

For those new to the writer-editor relationship, keep this in mind: the editor chose your work, which means she believes your work deserves to have an audience. You both have the same goals: for your unique author’s voice to shine, the book to be loved by readers, and hopefully make a little money in the process.

Rebecca Wenrich Wheeler was raised in West Point, a small town in the Tidewater region of Virginia. From the moment she submitted her first short story to a young author’s contest in second grade, Rebecca knew she wanted to be a writer. Her love of writing led her to earn a BA in English and an MEd in English education. She spent several years as a high school teacher, during which she also developed a passion for mental health advocacy. Rebecca completed an MA in professional counseling and now works in the school-based mental health field and as a college adjunct psychology instructor. Rebecca also teaches yoga for the young and the young at heart, and she likes to infuse yoga and breathwork in her counseling practice wherever she can. She believes the most valuable use of her time is teaching youth how to love and care for each other and the world around them. Her stories share her focus on positive relationships and a love of nature. Rebecca now lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband, two children, and two spoiled Siamese cats. Readers can connect with her on Instagram @rebeccawwheeler_author, Twitter @RWW_author, and www.rebeccawwheeler.com

A (Fiction) Writer's Duty to Their Readers

By: Michael Kaufman

Imagine this: Charles Dickens rewrites his novels to cut out anything about the miserable conditions facing the working class and poor in 19th-century England. Leo Tolstoy revises War and Peace to leave out Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Toni Morrison doesn’t notice the racism hammering Black people, Salman Rushdie ignores the impact of colonialism, and Margaret Atwood omits the growth of the hyper-patriarchal religious right. 

We’d be left with Hallmark greeting cards. Hollowed out, superficial, why-bother-reading, fiction.

But here are the mantras I still hear from too many writers: “I’m not political.” “I leave politics out of my fiction.” “Art (with a capital A, of course) has no room for politics.”

As a fiction writer whose latest mystery (The Last Resort) revolves around some serious themes (climate change and violence against women) — the book ads say “Margaret Atwood meets Raymond Chandler meets Greta Thunberg” — I’d like to share a few thoughts with you about the place of social, political and economic themes in fiction.  

Including such themes does not mean you’re writing a political pamphlet or telling people how to vote. 

Broadly put, politics — whether in governments, workplaces or the personal politics of relationships — is all about the exercise of power and how the institutions and ideas we inherit from the past effect all facets of our lives. Power and conflict (as well as love and connection) lie both at the core and the ephemera of people’s lives. This meshes perfectly with fiction. After all, at its heart, even the most escapist fiction deals with conflict. It deals with the struggles and challenges people experience, whether in the supposed quiet of their homes or the deafening blasts of a country at war. 

Imagining that your fiction isn’t “political” is a luxury only enjoyed by those who have some form of social power. 

It would be pretty impossible for a LatinX, Asian-American, American Indian, or Black writer to pen a present-day story that isn’t informed by past injustices, ongoing racism, and the daily hammering of micro-aggressions. It would be impossible for a woman to pretend that sexual harassment, violence against women, unequal pay, sexist remarks, and limits to women’s autonomy aren’t a factor in her women characters’ decisions, movements, life-choices, relationships, and work. Similarly, others who don’t enjoy social power — those who face discrimination and bias because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, physical and mental differences, or socio-economic class — simply don’t have the luxury of pretending that art is separate from the world we live in.

That much said, thankfully fiction is different from nonfiction. 

I’m fortunate in that I get to write both. (My latest nonfiction book is The Time Has Come: Why Men Must Join the Gender Equality Revolution.) When I want to teach something about that world, I write nonfiction. In my fiction, I get to tell stories that are situated in that world. I get to entertain, amuse, startle, soothe, amaze, outrage, sadden, turn on, and delight.  

In The Last Resort, and my Jen Lu mystery series as a whole, I face a particular challenge. Well, actually two big ones.

One is that it is set in the near future in Washington, D.C. The last thing the world needs is another grim, dystopian novel or movie. Yes, climate change is hitting hard in 2034, the gulf between rich and poor is widening, but as a long-time activist for social justice, I’m a pretty positive and hopeful guy. I wanted to recognize the challenges that lie ahead, but ultimately, my goal was to write a page-turner, a story that’s as much fun to read as it was to write. And I got to tell you, it was really fun to write.

The second is I didn’t want it to be “about” those serious themes but rather have Jen Lu embroiled in them, along with her very unusual partner, Chandler. Here’s the way I do it: Environmental lawyer and media darling Patty Garcia dies in a bizarre accident on a golf course. Of the seven billion people on the planet, only D.C. police detective Jen Lu thinks she was murdered. After all, Garcia just won a court case for massive climate change reparations to be paid out by oil, gas, and coal companies. Chandler, the bio-computer implanted in her brain and wannabe tough guy, tells her to put on the brakes, but soon the two of them are digging deep. Did her abusive ex-husband kill her or was it a big shot in the oil industry…or perhaps someone else? In no time, Jen is in the crosshairs of those who want to ensure the truth never comes to light, no matter the cost. Jen Lu is next on the killer’s list.

My decision to make the series playful, to imbue the books with a sense of hope, to have the reader smiling on one page and biting their nails on the next — such is the strategy I use that allows me to seamlessly fold in the social and political themes.  

Oh, one last thing on Tolstoy: Although I stand by what I said above, he’d have been the first to say he should have tightened up the battle scenes and the exposition about the war. He himself said Anna Karenina, written eight years after War and Peace, was his first real novel.

Michael Kaufman, PhD, is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction books. As an advisor, activist, and keynote speaker, he has developed innovative approaches to engage men and boys in promoting gender equality and positively transforming men's lives. Over the past four decades his work with the United Nations, governments, non-governmental organizations, corporations, trade unions, and universities has taken him to fifty countries.

Chad Boudreaux on Creating A Different Kind of Scavenger Hunt

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. 

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Chad Boudreaux, author of Scavenger Hunt which releases on January 31

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

The specific origin point for my novel Scavenger Hunt is a hidden eighth floor of the Main Justice Building in Washington, D.C. Main Justice is headquarters for many of the top U.S. lawyers, including the U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Solicitor General. The elevators at Main Justice, however, only reach the seventh floor. But there are eight sets of windows. That seemed strange to me back in 2002, when I started work there, so I conducted research on the building and unearthed no clues. Coming up short, I sought out a man who’d worked at Main Justice for several decades—a silver-haired institutionalist—and he told me that, before they built the FBI building (across the street), the eighth floor had served as the old FBI ballistics lab. He said there was a secret staircase that led to the eighth floor, which was now more of a utility floor. Mesmerized by this news, I grabbed a custodian with access to the staircase, a flashlight, and a notepad and ventured to the hidden floor. Many of the notes I doodled on that notepad are now in Chapter Two of Scavenger Hunt.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I figured the secret eighth floor at the Justice Department would provide the perfect meeting place for a clandestine, illegal operation staffed by amazing counterterrorism operatives from disparate agencies. The group consists of a Rambo-like figure from Delta Force, a former CIA operative with a questionable past, and a beautiful and stealth woman—a shadow—from NSA. All that remained was placing my all-star group in a theatre of unimaginable danger facing unspeakable tragedy. Beyond that, I introduced the real-life tensions inherent with combatting terrorism in a constitutional republic underpinned with strong individual rights. Readers will find that, throughout the story, I take them to cool spots in the Nation’s capital and pull back the curtain a bit on how things work in the mysterious U.S. intelligence, legal, and law enforcement communities. All that rounds out a plot that, if I’ve done my job, provides the platform for an entertaining, unforgettable story. 

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

My mischievous characters do whatever they can to turn my original outline on its head. I will have a story plotted in my brain, but I rarely can predict how my characters will respond when I place them in theater, trap them in a box, and tell them to escape from the box. Stephen King mentions this phenomenon in his classic book On Writing, and when I first read it, I rolled my eyes at the thought of characters having minds of their own. But now I know that great characters will surprise you, and sometimes you must let them do their own thing, even if that means changing the story. My protagonist in Scavenger Hunt, Blake Hudson, is a fairly composed young man . . . or so I thought until someone messed with his four-legged best friend. I’m still shocked at how Blake responded to certain events in the book, and his actions when left unsupervised changed the novel’s trajectory and ending.   

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

Presently, I have five stories in my head. Story ideas come easy, putting them on the shelf is hard. Great stories will haunt you if you don’t tell them, so eventually authors must memorialize, nurture, and finish them. Many of my story ideas come while exercising and listening to fast-paced music. One of my recommendations to writers of fiction who struggle with finding and holding stories is to assign sticky titles to bubbling ideas. For instance, I had an idea recently for a story that was vague and ephemeral. I assigned it a title: The Puppeteer. Because I gave the idea a title, my mind had a solid reference point to revisit, and now it’s developing into a compelling story.  

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

I suspect there is some business savvy inherent in prioritizing stories. My artsy answer is that the next story in the queue knocks the loudest. For example, I plan to write more novels in the Scavenger Hunt series, and many ask if my second novel is a sequel. It’s not. My second novel will be a thriller outside the series. I’m not sure if that makes the best business sense, but—although I desire to sell a ton of books—I’m not writing novels for fame or money, and I had to write that non-sequel thriller next. It just kept knocking, knocking, knocking loudly—driving me mad!

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

My writing buddy for Scavenger Hunt was my bestie and the only real character in the novel: my Great Dane, Judge. Judge died of cancer several years ago, and his death broke my heart into pieces. I haven’t mustered the courage to adopt or buy another dog, so Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam remain my primary writing buddies.

Before becoming Executive Vice President & Chief Legal Officer of the nation’s largest military shipbuilder, Chad Boudreaux served as Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where he advised Secretary Michael Chertoff on almost all significant matters facing the newly established department.  Before working for Homeland Security, Boudreaux served in several high-ranking positions at the U.S. Justice Department, where he was hired the night before the September 11, 2001 attacks. During his time at the Justice Department, Boudreaux focused most of his time on matters relating to terrorism and homeland security.  Boudreaux graduated from Baylor University in Texas in 1995 and from the University of Memphis School of Law in 1998, where he was Managing Editor of the law review.