QUESTION: Don, welcome to my blog. Tell us a little bit about your new book, “Editor-Proof Your
Writing: 21 Steps to the Clear Prose Publishers and Agents Crave.”
ANSWER: Let’s start with this premise. Writers
know they should self-edit, but most have no clue what their editing problems
are. And if they don’t know them, how
can they solve them?
I learned this from
forty years of editing and writing: as a magazine editor for eleven years, a PR
professional for six, and head of my own PR firm for twenty-one. I always wished my writers could self-edit,
but that seemed impossible.
There’s a lot of
advice out there, of course—hefty editing manuals, style manuals, and so on—but
little of it is of practical value to the beginning writer. Most editing manuals are like geography books
that give great information but don’t show how to get from place to place. They’re like dictionaries from which one is
asked to select words to write the Great American Novel. Again: if you don’t know what your writing
problems are, how do you know what in those big books you should apply? “Editor-Proof Your Writing” helps them learn
that, since it helps them identify their personal problem areas.
QUESTION: How did you come to write this particular book?
ANSWER:
The idea hit me as I read a fog-filled paperback on a flight from
Chicago to Atlanta. I was intrigued that
editing problems kept repeating themselves. A pattern emerged, and I became
excited. Had I discovered the writer’s
Rosetta Stone?
I spent hundreds of hours after
that, recording offending sentences of many other writers and sorting them by
problem type. I eventually identified 21
distinct problems and today call their solutions the “21 Steps to Fog-Free
Writing.” Those problems are actually tips
of bad-writing icebergs, and eliminating them resolves otherwise complicated
editing problems.
QUESTION: What is the one part of your book that you believe everyone
should read?
ANSWER:
Actually, since the book shows writers what they’re doing wrong
before it offers solutions, they should start on page one and work
through. They’ll find problems they
never knew they had.
Here’s how the system works. Writers apply the 21 Steps, one at a time, to
their manuscript’s first chapter. Then they
use that total experience to finish the manuscript.
Let’s look at Step 3, for example, which
involves changing passive voice to active voice. It’s a problem many writers have and often
don’t recognize.
The writers learn why this is a
problem, see examples of it, read a “Fog Alert!” sidebar that shows more
before-after examples, then edit ten problem sentences. After every two or three Steps, they edit a
mini-chapter of “Sarah’s Perils,” a tongue-in-cheek melodrama, to find and fix
the problems they’ve just studied.
Finally, they search their
own manuscript’s first chapter for passive sentences (they now know what to
look for) and change them to active.
With many Steps, they’ll learn how to use their word processor’s
“search” function to find the problems.
QUESTION: Who have been your cheerleaders during your writing career?
ANSWER: I’d have to say my
students. I taught this method for three
years to online classes, and got rave reviews.
I show some on my website (http://DonMcNair.com
) and in the front pages of the book.
QUESTION: What projects are you currently working on?
ANSWER: To date I’ve written six novels
and four non-fiction books, along with my client work. I now mostly edit novels for others.
Don
McNair is a professional editor and the author of ten published novels and
non-fiction books. His latest,
“Editor-Proof Your Writing: 21 Steps to the Clear Prose Publishers and Agents
Crave,” can be reviewed and ordered at his website, http://DonMcNair.com.
HOW TO
EDITOR-PROOF YOUR WRITING
By
Don McNair
BLURB:
Most editing manuals are like geography books. They give great information, but
don’t show how to get from place to place. Editor-Proof
Your Writing: 21 Steps to the Clear Prose Publishers and Agents Crave
is a GPS that leads you through the writing jungle to solve your specific
writing problems.
Most editing manuals are like dictionaries from which you’re asked to select
words to write the Great American Novel. This book shows what words to use and
what words NOT to use.
Most
editing manuals are loaded with mind-numbing theory. This
one presents knowledge a step at a time and asks you to apply what you
learned—a step at a time—to your manuscript’s first chapter. Along the way you’ll also edit a nine-chapter
melodrama and check your editing against the author’s. When you finish, you’ll have an editor-proofed
first chapter and will be ready to edit the rest of your book.
This
system was proven to work in
three years of weekend and online classes, titled Editor-Proof That Chapter and
Twenty-One Steps to Fog-Free Writing. They are parts One and Two of this book. Part Three discusses finding and working with critique partners,
professional editors, publishers, and agents.
The students loved the concept!
This
book is perfect for use in classrooms. The information is presented in
bite-sized lessons which can be assigned daily. See what students say about
their classroom experiences on the back page.
If
you’ve never been published, there’s both bad news and good news.
The
bad news is that most unpublished writers will never be published. Editors
receive hundreds of manuscripts each week and ultimately buy fewer than one
percent. We’ve all heard of hapless
writers who have wallpapered their home or office walls with rejections. Perhaps you’re one.
The
reason is basic. Many writers send
problem-riddled manuscripts to editor after editor, as Barbara did, believing
they are perfect. In the meantime they
blithely build the same flaws into their next manuscript. They
simply don’t know they’re making those mistakes. Unless someone tells them or they somehow
learn on their own, their manuscripts will be rejected the rest of their
lives.
Note,
however, that someone does recognize
their problems. Those editors! They quickly spot them in a manuscript’s
first chapter—often on the first page—and reject the submission without reading
further. They know the rest of the manuscript contains the same mistakes, just
as we know an iceberg’s submerged part is made up of more of the same ice seen
on top. But editors simply don’t have
the time or inclination to teach authors writing skills. So they send out “sorry, it’s not for us”
letters and move on to the next manuscript in their bulging “in” baskets.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Don
McNair spent his working life editing magazines (eleven years), producing public
relations materials for an international PR company (six years), and heading
his own marketing communications firm, McNair Marketing Communications (twenty-one
years). His creativity has won him three Golden Trumpets for best industrial
relations programs from the Publicity Club of Chicago, a certificate of merit
award for a quarterly magazine he wrote and produced, and the Public Relations
Society of America’s Silver Anvil. The latter is comparable to the Emmy and
Oscar in other industries.
McNair
has written and placed hundreds of trade magazine articles and four published
non-fiction how-to books. He considers his latest, Editor-Proof Your Writing: 21 Steps to the Clear Prose Publishers and
Agents Crave, (published April 1, 2013 by Quill Driver Books) to be the cap
of his forty-year writing and editing career.
It’s an easy-to-use editing manual that helps writers edit, step by step, their
first chapter, then use the knowledge gained to edit the rest of their work.
McNair
has also written six novels; two young adults (Attack of the Killer Prom Dresses and The Long Hunter), three romantic suspenses (Mystery on Firefly Knob, Mystery
at Magnolia Mansion, and co-authored
Waiting for Backup!), and a romantic
comedy (BJ, Milo, and the Hairdo from Heck). All are published
internationally, and are available at his website, http://DonMcNair.com .
McNair,
a member of Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, and the
Editorial Freelancers Association, now concentrates on editing novels for
others. He teaches two online editing classes.
