What Keeps Me Reading
Plus my web migration nightmare and a Halloween audiobook treat
Years ago when I worked as an acquiring editor for a children’s book publisher, I was in charge of the slush. In a little less than three years, I rejected over 2,000 manuscripts, mostly by form letter, sometimes with a few lines of encouragement scribbled at the bottom.
In more than 600 cases—the ones where I kept reading to the end—I wrote a personal letter critiquing the work and offering to look at the next draft. (I know this because I still have copies.) In maybe a dozen cases, I wrote lengthy editorial letters, after which the author and I went several rounds to develop a manuscript that either did or didn’t eventually make it into print.1
As a long-time manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press, I handled hundreds of scholarly book manuscripts.
These days, I sometimes read the work of friends or children. It’s mostly fiction—plays, stories, children’s books, novels—although I’ve also read a 96-page business plan for a start-up microbrewery, a chapter on ancient Greek logos theology, and more than one job application letter.
Anyway, you get the picture: I’ve critiqued a lot of writing! If I had to identify what keeps me reading an imperfect manuscript, it would be one of the following:
The content is so compelling it doesn’t matter if the writing isn’t great.
The writing is so good it doesn’t matter if anything is happening.
I’m getting paid to read it.2
A friend or relative wrote it.
All of which helps me remember to follow my own advice when I put on my writer’s hat:
Cut anything that doesn’t advance the plot or develop a character.
Craft each sentence.
Get feedback (pay for it, if necessary) before you submit.
Choose your friends and relatives well.
Trick or Treat?
Listen for free! Here’s a bonus audiobook chapter of my spooky middle-grade mystery, Maddie’s Ghost. (It’s different from the sample at audiobook retailers.) I hope it’s a treat. Maybe you’ll consider listening to the entire book on Audible, Spotify, Audiobooks.com, or (in some libraries) at Hoopla. I’m told it’s a terrific family read! Narrator Piper Goodeve is a real pro, a 3-time Earphones award winner.
As for the fright level, children (8-12) tell me it’s way less scary than Harry Potter. And [spoiler alert] there are no ghosts. Everything turns out to have a rational explanation. You can read the first chapters here.
My Web Migration Nightmare
On August 27, my webhost Typepad announced that they were closing up shop on September 30 and deleting everyone’s stuff. For me, that meant less than 5 weeks to find a new home for 4 websites and 15 years of blog posts.
It was at least a week before I understood the gravity of the situation. There are importing tools at Bluehost/WordPress, and I thought “How hard can it be?” But nothing I tried worked. Hours on the phone with the reps at my new home left me no better off. I even paid $150 for their migration service—and they refunded the money, saying “Typepad? Sorry!” It turns out html files exported from Typepad’s antiquated proprietary software don’t play nicely with more up-to-date platforms like WordPress.
Desperate to have a professional web presence before I started my publicity campaign for the Chicago launch of The Time-Jinx Twins, I watched tutorials and manually recreated the few essential pages of my children’s book sites, CarolSaller.com and EddiesWar.com. In the nick of time, I redirected their old Typepad URLs to the new links at Bluehost one by one.
My huge adult nonfiction blog Writer, Editor, Helper (Subversive Copy Editor) wasn’t as easy. It was down for over a month. No one at Bluehost could help me bulk-redirect the old Typepad post URLs to their new (different) link structure. Three different reps told me to fill out an individual redirection order for each of the 250-odd blog posts. I would rather have pulled out hairs until I was bald.
(In case you’re wondering what it’s like to be a published author, a lot of it is pretty much like this. I’m sorry if your eyes are glazing over. I have to vent. And I know at least one or two of you are dying of suspense.)
Refusing to believe there wasn’t some coding solution, I turned to Claude.ai—why didn’t I think of that before??—who mercifully told me how to paste 5 lines of code into the “wp-config.php file” (whatever that is) in the bowels of WordPress, and bingo, everything instantly redirected. Readers, I wept with joy.
There was still a lot of cleanup to do. None of the images survived the journey. With the help of the Wayback Machine3 I started restoring and replacing stuff. It was painful. Sisyphean. Even though I no longer blog, the site still gets a lot of traffic and probably helps sell The Subversive Copy Editor. I was determined to keep the archive available to visitors. And yesterday I finished!
The sites aren’t beautiful. The pre-fab design themes were too slick and commercial for my content, so I went with bare bones. But I’m glad to see everything looking clean and updated, and (I’ll admit it) I sometimes got a kick out of rereading the Writer, Editor, Helper posts.
Here’s a good one: “I’d Like to Thank the Academy.”
A Chicago Celebration for The Time-Jinx Twins
On October 18, Hyde Park’s oldest indie bookstore, 57th Street Books, hosted my Chicago launch party for The Time-Jinx Twins, and it was wall-to-wall fun. I read some passages, talked a little about writing time travel, and took many questions.
My “make-a-time-machine” craft project was a hit, and people seemed to get a kick out of dialing my 1970s rotary phones. With my 4 wristwatches (to ensure I always know the time in Chicago, Abu Dhabi, Beijing, and Paris), my math-equation dress with its instant space-flight trajectories and, of course, pockets, I felt ready for anything.
I met some amazing, curious children, my stack of books sold out, and the store had to take orders! The only flop was the gallon of leftover coffee.
Yes, those odds are sad: Only about a dozen out of 2,000 unsolicited MSS made it from the slush to another round of consideration. The odds are certainly worse today, given the avalanche of AI-generated manuscripts editors have to deal with.
In case you’re wondering, I don’t freelance!
If you aren’t aware of this magic portal to the Internet Past, check it out. Although I was among the first to condemn the Internet Archive for its criminal piracy of copyrighted books (mine among them), its maintenance of the Wayback Machine almost makes up for it.
The old post you linked to, "I'd Like to Thank the Academy," came at just the right time for me. I recently wrote the acknowledgments section for my novel, and I made all the mistakes you list, including talking about my psychiatric journey while writing the book! I thought it was so personal, and clever, and quirky. Thank you for saving me from myself.
I just listened to your delightful sample chapter of Maddie’s Ghost. I’m currently working on improving the portrayal of my MC’s interiority and it was so helpful! Thank you. I can’t wait to read the whole thing. I just got it on Audible. It is just the “craft” book I needed right now.