"Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t"
And other hard lessons for book authors
Time for a book update
I have been working on “RUNHUNDRED” all week long. Last week as well. The reason for this newly revived authoring zeal is that I hired a professional editor and got her feedback lately.
So what’s an editor doing?
Basically, there are 4 stages of editing:
Editorial assessment – The broadest feedback you can get, usually at a very early stage of your writing process. It puts the focus on the most basic questions, such as if your plot makes sense at all, and whether your story is worth being told, or not.
Developmental (or structural) editing – A much more detailed feedback on the plot development, depth of the characters, flow and pacing, consistency, clarity, and overall story arc.
Copy (or line) editing – Now we’re on the level of tone and style, spelling, grammar, word usage (e.g. repetition), usage of numbers and numerals, correct tense, and minor inconsistencies. Technically, copy and line editing are not the same, but they’re often rolled into one.
Proofreading – The very last stage of editing. It usually happens after final formatting of the book. One last check for spelling and grammar errors, awkward word and page breaks, paragraph spacing, indention, and choice of fonts and their sizes.
(Bonus) Fact checking – A fact check might be necessary, if you write about a niche topic. It’s a final check for factual inaccuracies or straight up misinformation.
Editing Runhundred
The editor I hired helped me with developmental and line editing. I was lucky enough to find someone who is well-experienced in the sports book genre. She, for example, helped Kilian Jornet with his book “Run or Die” alongside a good number of other running books.
Her feedback was mind-blowing. Want an example? Ok, here you are:
Before:
“We particularly enjoyed the area around Pico Grande. It’s the middle part of the MIUT route, shortly before the biggest climb up to Pico Ruivo. The rolling terrain from Encumeada up to the top and the beautiful downhill to Curral Das Freiras were just breathtaking.”
The editor’s feedback:
“The word ‘breathtaking’ is a very runner-ish description. Can you add more visuals?”
After:
“While discovering further parts of the MIUT racecourse, we particularly enjoyed the area around Pico Grande. It’s the middle part of the MIUT route, shortly before the biggest climb up to Pico Ruivo. The rolling terrain from Encumeada up to the top and the beautiful downhill to Curral Das Freiras were just breathtaking. An unadulterated mix of winding dirt and rock paths, massive stone walls and densely covered, jungle-like forests. The scenery was changing completely every few kilometers, and we couldn't get out of our amazement anymore. What a wonderful place on earth.”
You get the idea.
Interlude: Different Views
Before kicking off this editing process, I was mostly busy with planning a potential book release and talking to various publishers. The rather boring business side of such a project. To be honest, it frustrated me at times. Just fundamentally different ideas, time planning, and conceptions.
I’m not judging, though. It is the nature of things, that a publisher (or a book agent, for that matter) has a different perspective on a book project, than the author himself.
I am thinking about the publishing process a lot and will surely share some more in-depth insights about this topic, in one of my upcoming Das Z Letters.
Back to the book
So much the more I am happy to be back working on the actual story again.
I am officially editing the 6th draft of my book manuscript. This means that I basically started from scratch five times already. In a previous Das Z Letter I called this a “Sisyphean Nightmare”. But once I learned that it is actually normal to rework everything multiple times, I started to chill out and carry the burden. It is, in fact, the usual procedure for writing a book.
In the case of my 6th draft, the current one, I wouldn’t even call it a burden, anymore. It is a great pleasure to go through the editor’s corrections and suggestions. Her feedback is of greatest value, even though I was already very satisfied with my 5th draft. And the 4th as well. Also, the 3rd. I even liked the first one.
The reason I can’t get enough of revising the book is simple.
“Nobody wants to read your sh*t”
Allow me to explain this tough love lesson by one of my favorite authors, Steven Pressfield (In fact, it’s the title of one of his greatest books).
Books are everywhere. Millions of them. And so are magazines, papers, blogs, social media content, advertisements, audiobooks, movies and tv shows.
If you really want anyone to pay attention to your work, you have to make whatever you write or create so interesting, so compelling and so enriching that a person would have to be crazy not to read it.
In Pressfield’s own words:
“None of us wants to hear your self-centered, ego-driven, unrefined demands for attention. Why should we? It’s boring. There’s nothing in it for us.”
A great book is a gift. It is for the readers’ good, not for our own reward. Or to put it in the words of ghostwriter (not mine) AJ Harper, who, by the way, is Steven Pressfield’s biggest fan:
“A book is not about something. A book is for someone.”
and
”Reader First, Last, and Always.”
Understood and accepted.
A lesson in humility
After all, writing RUNHUNDRED is a lesson in humility. Why? Because it’s my first book and the learning curve is exceptionally steep. I have made many mistakes in the process of writing this book and even after it is published, I will recognize dozens of things that I could have done better.
However, the same will apply to my second book. And my third. For all the books I will be writing, for that matter. Both as an author and as a person, I constantly aim to learn and evolve. That’s what drives me.
Everything not Running
It rarely happens that I eat a full bar of chocolate or a bag of potato chips on the couch. My wife Lisa and I also don’t have a secret candy stash in our flat. However, we do have a sweet tooth, especially after eating dinner.
Our most recent countermeasure is dates. But not just dates, but “dates on fire”, figuratively speaking. We try to find the biggest and softest medjool dates and then fill them up with peanut butter, put an almond in them an then – fasten your seat belts – coat them with chocolate. Occasionally, we go completely nuts and even put coarse-grained salt and a few roasted hazelnuts on top, to make things even more fancy (and delicious).
I doubt that our “dates on fire” snack is particularly healthy, especially if you eat 2 or 3 of them, but compared with industrially processed sweets it clearly wins the match.
You’re hungry now? Good. Get yourself some peanut butter and dates, and try it yourself!
Gotta try those dates with peanut butter #runfatboyrun
A book is a loooooong process.