Living the Dream

Established on October 2, 2020, Red Quill Co LLC just celebrated its golden birthday with this being my second year in business, and I’m still riding the high! Even though I have been officially editing books for two years now, it still feels so surreal whenever I get to say it out loud. With the outbreak of COVID-19 and how it affected all businesses everywhere, plus the fact that I have the luxury of working from home in this line of work, I don’t find many opportunities where I get to announce what I do for a living, but whenever I do, I still get butterflies.

Although I’m always excited to proudly declare that I am a book editor, I still sometimes find myself dealing with imposter syndrome when I voice it out loud. “Did I say that right? Am I really a book editor? Are they going to think I’m a liar?” It’s an odd feeling, I’ve got to admit. But then I remind myself, yep, yep, and nope. Or if they do, who cares? I know the truth, and I’m living my dream!

Apprenticeship

My favorite subject throughout school was always English. In high school, when others rolled their eyes at another essay or creative writing assignment, I was the odd one out inwardly shouting, “Yay!” I thrived in anything reading or writing related and would happily devote time to that subject matter to gain even more skill. I read book after book in all sorts of genres and always fantasized about finding that perfect book club someday. I wrote original works in my spare time including poetry, fantasy, romance, and memoir.

Later, I attended Sonoma State University and obtained my bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in creative writing. That degree took many years and several courses including literary analysis seminars, creative writing workshops, and classical literature and myth studies, just to name a few. I had one class that involved meeting with my professor one-on-one each month with a minimum of forty pages of original content each time (double-spaced, that’s roughly 10,000 words!). I would hand in the new pages and we’d have an in-depth discussion about the pages I had turned in the month prior. The pace was difficult to keep up with on top of a full load of classes, but it taught me the value of just getting it all down on paper as author Anne Lamott encourages in her book, Bird by Bird. It felt as though I were an author meeting with my editor, and the personalized feedback, encouragement, and push to reach for greater heights was truly an amazing experience. It was because of this fact that that was one of my most-cherished adventures at SSU.

My absolute favorite classes, though, were the creative writing workshops where we would each write something new every week. It could be a chapter in a book we were working on or a full and complete short story. Similar to the previously mentioned class except with a group of peers, we’d go around in a circle and discuss each person’s work from the week prior, often voluntarily staying an hour or longer after class ended to finish sharing feedback and constructive criticism. Everyone in that class was fully invested in the process of becoming a better writer and that made it a phenomenal environment and group to be a part of. These classes taught me the value of becoming vulnerable and putting yourself out there, enhanced my writing craft tremendously, and helped me dive deep into the analysis of it all so I could help other writers do the same by editing their books to become the absolute best they could be.

Remaining Coachable Even as a Master of Your Craft

In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell claims that you need 10,000 hours to become an expert in a certain field. Similarly, living my dream as a book editor didn’t come easily or quickly. I had to invest years of hard work and deliberate practice as an apprentice to gain a mastery level. Regardless, you could ask me 10,000 times and each time I will tell you it was well worth the investment to be able to offer my clients the best when it comes to my editing services. During my time at SSU, I poured my whole self into every class and I can proudly say that I graduated cum laude with my bachelor’s degree in English and a concentration in creative writing. Every time I work on a new manuscript for a client, I grow even more as I carry with me the multitude of skills gained during my period of training.

And I’m not done training yet! A recent client of mine reminded me of the incredible value of remaining coachable in his inspirational book (Make God Famous: From Villain to Superhero to Beyond Your Best Self, by Joe Moss II—coming soon!). Remaining coachable is one of the biggest things that sets successful people apart from the rest. Anyone who thinks they have been there, done that and as though they already know all there is to know will quickly become obsolete and behind the times.

Life is constantly in motion—you can never know too much and there is no limit to your growth! I’m constantly training to keep my skills sharp, learn new things, and enhance my eagle eyes. I take webinars and courses through my membership with the EFA, watch videos from the Reedsy Blog, and research articles on all topics related to writing, editing, and publishing books.

I even spend some of my down time writing creatively to get into the mind of an author. Although I haven’t ever published anything (outside of one of my poems that became part of a collection of contest winners many years ago), I do hope to one day become a published author with a fiction novel of my own. I’m currently working on a fantasy fiction series and have ideas brewing for a romance or two as well. I even have one book completed, but I still have the big self-edit to do before hiring an editor (yes, even editors need editors!).

But my creative writing will always take a backseat to my editing career and my clients because I just love editing so much. I know it may sound weird, but I truly do! I enjoy the whole process from meeting new people, to learning new things, to becoming entranced by a whole new world in each and every manuscript. Who wouldn’t love to earn a living by reading books? I’m beyond proud to stand up and shout to the world,

“I’m a book editor!”

Bonus!

If you’re ready to hire an editor, make sure you check out my latest post on Facebook or LinkedIn for a bonus offer in celebration of the second anniversary of Red Quill Co LLC. Contact me today to secure your spot on my calendar!