This week, I’m talking with Dr. Stephanie Vanderslice, the witty and heartfelt professor who taught me everything I know about children’s literature. She shares stories of withering and uplifting critiques, her experiences on submission, the editing partnership with her husband, how she finds the rest of her editing team, the “one weird trick” of reading all your work out loud to catch mistakes, and the downsides of being a concise writer.
Music: Harlequin by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3858-harlequin
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Show Notes:
@wordamour on twitter, Stephanie Vanderslice on FB, stephanie.vanderslice on Instagram, www.stephanievanderslice.com (needs updating but I'm trying to get to that).
The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life
The Lost Son
Dairy Hollow Writer’s Colony in Eureka Springs, AR: https://www.writerscolony.org/
John Vanderslice
Story Studio Chicago In a Year program: https://www.storystudiochicago.org/advanced-writing-programs-at-storystudio-chicago
Rebecca Makkai: http://rebeccamakkai.com/
The Great Believers: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45304101-the-great-believers
The Hundred-Year House: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693644-the-hundred-year-house
M Shelly Conner, “everyman”: http://mshellyconner.com/
Transcript:
Ariel: Hi there and welcome to Edit Your Darlings, a podcast that tries to take the sting out of editing by talking with darling authors about their experiences. I'm Ariel Anderson, and when I came up with the idea for this show, one of the first people I reached out to to interview was my guest this week. She is an absolute ray of sunshine, and I'm so excited for her to finally join me! Today I'm talking with Dr. Stephanie Vanderslice, and she is near and dear to my heart because she's one of the professors from my alma mater, and she taught me everything I know about children's literature. She was also one of the two faculty readers on my thesis project, and her red pen is the gentlest in all the land.
Professor and Director of the Arkansas Writers MFA workshop, Stephanie has published many books on creative writing pedagogy, as well as The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life, named a top writing book by Poets and Writers and her novel The Lost Sun coming out in spring 2022. Thank you so much for making time to talk with me, Stephanie!
Stephanie: Well, I am so excited to be here. So thank you for asking.
Ariel: I have read The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life three or four or five or seven times now, and my copy was actually a gift from one of my dear friends, Meagan Wilde, who was also one of your students. And I still have the gift note in it that I used for a bookmark, and it says, “This is so lit.” So I wanted to dig into some questions that popped up as I was going through it the last time.
First, you talk about a student who has asked you to judge whether they have what it takes to be a writer, and you respond, among other things, “Is she willing to keep writing, even after an editor, agent, or anonymous colleague has just delivered a withering critique?” And I think every writer has faced that question, at some point in their career. I wonder where you as a writer have found the courage to keep on. Can you share an example of a withering critique that you have weathered?
Stephanie: Yes, I've had a few like really withering critiques. One in a workshop when I was a graduate student. She was in New Yorker humorous and essayist. I received a very withering critique from her that I really had to kind of take in stride, because while she was making good points, she also was not understanding at all what I was trying to do, and she was also being really mean. It was a very early story of mine, and so you know it wasn't the most mature thing I'd ever written. But it was about a child, and I had... I was an undergraduate major in human development and developmental psychology, and I also had been a nanny quite a bit, and so I had a lot of experienced children, and so she used me as an example to talk about point of view, and you know of course I was very young at the time, I was literally like maybe 23 or 24, and she was like, “What do you know about having children? What do you know about children, for example, you know and about writing what you know?” and I was like,
“Well, I know a fair amount.”
Ariel: Yeah, and the only thing that anyone is ever allowed to write are their own lived experiences, of course.
Stephanie: Right, oh yes, of course! You know like I couldn't imagine things. But anyway, so it was very weird that I'm recovered from it. I didn't take it too personally, but that was one example. Yeah, definitely.
Ariel: Yeah, and how do you find that courage to keep on?
Stephanie: I am just a very persistent person, and I certainly... and certainly being able to vent. I will say, it took me eight years to get The Lost Son published—I mean it's not published yes, it’s coming out in a year. It was a very up and down story. It was like the... it was the book that got me an agent, so that was wonderful like yay, this may be a good book, it got me an agent! And then, oh but no, it's not doing that well on submission. Oh but yes, this one editor is really interested in it. Oh, but no, now they're not.
So it went—it was on submission twice, and “on submission” means it's out to all the big publishers from the agent. I had some really close calls. So that was encouraging, like where they almost took it. And then she freed me to look for other publishers who were smaller that she wouldn't... I would do that myself because she would not be getting much of a percentage from that . So, I found this kind of cool publisher that I won't name, kind of like in between a big publisher and an independent publisher. So, I wrote to the editor there and I said do you need it to be agent... from an agent, or can I send it myself,” and the editor said, “Oh I'd like you to send it from your agent.” So, so she was very good about it and she sent it.
You know, so like a month and a half goes. I hear back from the agent, like he liked the story butm liked the novel, but ultimately decided to pass. Okay, fine. I'm very used to that at this point.
Two months later, I get an email from the agent. And she says, “Okay, this, this editor has written you back to say he's still thinking about you're on his mind. And he wants to talk to you about it, and talk to you about some edits you might make or some ideas that he has for it.” Now she said, “I don't usually recommend people make changes without a contract, but it's certainly an interesting thing and maybe you might just want to talk to him.”
Ariel: So, “revise and resubmit” tends to come with a contract?
Stephanie: Usually, yes
Ariel: Oh, OK.
Stephanie: She's like, “I don't know if you want to take this risk, but...” I was like, you know, what I did I have to lose, really? So, and also I didn't know... I wasn't necessarily gonna resubmit; I just wanted to hear what he had to say. So we talked for like an hour. He was a very nice guy and he made excellent...what I thought were excellent points. I was like yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying. I took ample notes. I see what you're saying, but it required a significant revision of the last third of the book at least. And this was a book that I hadn't, you know, I hadn't really revised in a couple of years.
Anyway, so I was like I'm gonna try this. So, I, I did a writer's retreat at Derry Hollow in Eureka Springs, and I just spent like seven days doing what he asked and completely revising that. Now, let me say, I mean I would not have done this if I didn't think he had good points. So I did that, and then I you know got it ready for her to resubmit to him. She's resubmitted it to him. And he was like, “You know what, this is great you made all my revisions, but I still think I'm gonna pass on it.” So he did. And you know what, in a way, I'm weirdly grateful because I think he helped me to make a better book again. It got shortlisted in two or three contests. So all those little motivations kept me going.
Ariel: You said that you've gotten some uplifting critiques, and you spent two pages of the Geek’s Guide in praise of your developmental editors and even us silent copy editors, and you say that, you know, your developmental editors have challenge you to elevate your writing and take it to the next level and that copy editors have saved you from “embarrassing” yourself, and I put that last one in quotes because I doubt that you have much to be embarrassed about in your writing. So I wondered, what are some of the questions that your developmental editors asked you that teased out more from your books or those little details that the copy editors have found that no one else has? What has your editing team done for you lately?
Stephanie: A lot! You know, everybody has kind of things that they do in their writing that're kind of habits, and one of mine developmentally is I tend to assume... I just assume that the reader is with me, that they are with me, they are right in my head, and I don't need to explain anything. And, I cannot tell you the developmental edits that I've gotten over the years have been like, “You know, I see what you're saying here, but I don't feel like you're making the connections you could be making, I think you can be more explicit. I think you can, you know, really explain this more, or I guess the other thing would be to develop it or to write more because I think I just have to write a sentence and everyone's on board with me, whereas the developmental editor be like, “I really feel like you really are about halfway there and need to explain the other half.”
And the funny thing about this is, I was just recently edited in the fall, and I had turned in this article for a collection that I thought was pretty good and then I presented it at a conference, and as I was presenting it, I was like, “this has issues.” I've already submitted it to this collection, so then I get the edits back. And this was an editor who had been incredibly, like, loved this other article that I did, I mean was like over the moon about it, but he was trying to be very nice and be like, “I don't think you're really making all these connections here and I really think you need to develop your argument a lot more.” And I’m just like, I feel like I could have that tattooed on my arm. “You have to develop this a lot more.”
And what they usually do is, they're asking questions kind of about, well, can you describe this thing or that thing, or I'm a little confused about this. And these are usually things where I just am assuming everyone's on board with me and fortunately they’re just like, no you really need to fill in a lot more. You know, that has happened to me almost from the beginning of when I was edited.
In terms of copy editing, oh my goodness! It's amazing how much you miss when you've gone over something over and over and over, and I always read my drafts out loud, or. That's like my final thing before turning them in, and I catch a lot that way. My most recent novel, I don't know how many times I've read that aloud, and I read it aloud again in the fall before I turned in the final edits, and I caught a lot I will say, and the editor returned it to me. She's like, “well I've only lightly edited this” and I was like well good because I've only edited it like ten times myself, but she still caught stuff, and like I said when I was returning it to her, I was like it's always really humbling to see the mistakes you make. I’m a writing teacher, I should not be making these mistakes, but I do.
I seem to have a hang up now, with, I think, “a lot” and...maybe a lot... “All right,” two words, or one word, and I used to totally have that down, but I did it wrong throughout this manuscript. You know, so thank goodness, thank goodness this person caught it. You know, and she pointed out other little things like, you know, something that would happen to be like, this is not physically possible. You know, restate this line, you know, so, but she was really good. So yeah, I mean, but this has happened many times I mean, thank God for copy editors, they catch so much. I just, and I marvel at them I'm like, how do they do that?
Ariel: How long does it take you to read your entire novel out loud,
Stephanie: A long time. It takes like, oh boy, at least like a week. Well, I would say a week of reading as much as I can, you know, during the day as much as I can without wearing out my voice. John does it too, my husband. It's A) a way to catch things, but it's also a way to... if you're stumbling over a sentence, it's not a good sentence, you know, and so I will hear that and be like, Oh, this has... you know, I have to work on this sentence.
Ariel: Yeah, so that actually gets into a little bit of another of my questions is that you really underline the point that writers have to carve out time for writing and protect that time, very carefully from those who might want a chunk of it for like a podcast interview. Do you carve out a different chunk of time for editing so that you're making progress on writing and editing at the same time, or do you stick with one, you know, like this week I'm going to be all editing and
next month I'm going to be all writing?
Stephanie: That actually really depends. I'm not great at doing both at the same time. I pretty much have to generate... generate and then revise and then edit. Like for example I'm working on this second novel. That’s another persistence thing, because I've been working on it since 2014, and keep having to go back and revise. But then, in my case, I've been working on that but then I had these ... I had the final draft going to the editor of my first novel. And I wanted to do a really good job with that so I stopped working on the second novel in November, and really focused on the edits. It depends. If it's one novel, if it's one thing, I can do some generation and then some editing, but if it's two different things I get confused.
The thing that I will do with editing, and let me—I will admit something, with editing and revising, I really like to do them. There are some people who hate them. There are writers who really don't like that. That's like my favorite thing because to me the hardest thing is to generate material, so like, it means that at least I have something that I'm.. that I've done you know. I have to get it down. Otherwise I'll stop myself to edit, so I have to actually generate as much as I can. Because otherwise I'll get, I can really, I can really spin my wheels going back and back to editing.
And then you mentioned your husband. Big portions of The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life, sort of read as this love letter with thank, and tenderness for john Vanderslice. He teaches at the same college, he has his own writing, and he acts as an additional set of eyes on your work. So I wondered how his feedback is different than anyone else's. And do you also edit his work the way that he edits yours, or does it only go one way?
Stephanie: I think it goes both ways. It's funny because I did not... I mean, I knew I was being pretty effusive about him. But you're not the only person who's pointed that out, that it's kind of a love letter. Makes me blush, but anyway.
He's really good. I think we’re each really good at editing each other's stuff like. I will often... he will be the last person that sees something of mine because he can read it and tell me if it doesn't make sense, or does it read okay. He catches stuff that I don't have like he's, he's really good with commas, he’s really good with like commas in dialogue. There's just a lot of things he's really good at that he catches. He's also really good when I've written a mouthful, he's good about that, he can point that out. Just a lot of good stuff. I'm a catch. I catch stuff with his. Sometimes it's spelling, sometimes it’s like an extra word, things like that.
But yeah, we're usually the last person to read before something goes out, and he gives me a really helpful feedback too and I do that for him. Also we talk to each other about our stuff a lot. I will say he, he talks to me some, I talk to him a lot about what I’m working on. And he's a really good listener in terms of letting me bounce things off him.
Ariel: Yeah. And so, you as a professor deeply interwoven with the writing community, you have this extensive network of writing professionals, and I wondered how you narrowed down the list to choose the people that you trust to edit your books to look at your work. What made your agent and beta readers and copy editors, the right fit?
Stephanie: Okay, that's a really good question. Well, with my novel, I actually wanted to pick people who weren't good readers but not necessarily writers, which does include my husband. He actually, he's always my reader, thank goodness, and he's both, but I have a friend who I feel is a really good reader. Sometimes you just want a reader’s reaction, and so she was my beta reader for my novel, and she was really good. In the sense of, I would just say, I want to know when you want to, when you want to put this down. When do you get bored, you know? It's funny too, because it's... a big part of the book takes place in World War Two, she said to me, “I really get bored by World War Two novels usually, I've just read so many of them, but this didn't bore me.”
Ariel: High praise!
So, and also my agent, oh my gosh, she's amazing. I call her the manuscript whisperer! Because she really is when. When I submitted the novel to her, it was about 50,000 words, and she, she was like, okay, she wanted to take me on as a writer and she liked a lot about my writing. She's like, this is too short. And I'm going to give you these editorial letters where I talk to you about where I would like to see more. Again, my classic problem is that I don't develop enough. But she really got the novel, she understood what I was trying to do, so when she would say, “I would like to hear more here or here or here,” I was like, Yes! Whereas I can only get that 50,000 words and couldn't see what else I needed to do, the questions that she asked me helped me to be like, oh yeah, I can totally add that part or add that part, you know. I just, sometimes you need someone to tease something out of you. And that's really what she is.
In terms of my scholarship, developmental editors really do that for me. I don't. Right now I have other people that are... you know, I'm actually hoping to develop some more editorial relationships but like peer... Well, I also have, I have two friends at UCA, they're actually in the education department, they're writers. We’re in a writing group together, and they really help me in terms of, again, like telling me where they felt pulled out of the story for one reason or another.
For this second novel that I'm working on, I spent all last year in a workshop at the Story Studio Chicago. It’s called Novel in a Year, and it's for people trying to, trying to get a novel, developed, and interestingly, I actually had written a novel, sent it to my agent, she was really didn't think it was there yet, we couldn't really put our finger on what she didn't think was working. I was in this one-year workshop where once a month I would go to Chicago and work with Rebecca Makkai in a, in a novel class. She is someone who's written the book The Great believers, the 100 Year House. She's an amazing writer, and when I read The Great Believers, which I think is one of the best books written so far this century, I really wanted to get inside her mind. I thought she really understood a lot of intuitive things about storytelling, also through experience. So taking this class I was like that way I can learn all this stuff from her, so even writers who are like at their point in, you know, pretty far along still take classes, you know, to learn. And actually that class taught me a lot that I can bring to my, my own writing classes. Ariel: Yeah. So the fact that you are traditionally published. You told me that you've never had to pay for your editing. Do you think that if you had to pay, that you would have approached it differently? Would you have chosen different people or skipped some steps in the process, or gone heavily into debt?
Stephanie: I think I definitely would pay for it, that's for sure. No matter what I needed to do. Because it's that important. I can't think of many things more important. So if I was going to publish something on my own—and I've thought about it from time to time—I would definitely pay someone whatever it costs. Because you can't do it yourself. Even someone like me who spends their lives embedded in words, I still can't edit myself, I just can't. And plus my own experience over time has been that if it weren't for editors, my books and my essays would not be what they are.
You know, if I were to hire someone, and I would, I would look for someone who I thought kind of was getting me and understanding what I was trying to do, but was also pretty shrewd, and also knew not to let me, like, get away with anything. But oh absolutely, I cannot imagine, you know, and sometimes oftentimes I'll look at a self-published thing, and I will get frustrated because I can tell, oh good they use an editor, and then oftentimes I'm like, they did not use an editor, and that just really bother me. What it does is, you know, writing is an experience, and you don't want anything to take you out of that experience. If there's the littlest thing off, you're going to be taken out of it.
Ariel: And so the fact that you were traditionally published also meant that you didn't necessarily get to choose who you worked with
Stephanie: That’s right.
Ariel: for the editor or copy editor or your proofreader. Did that change the experience for you at all?
Stephanie: You know, I've been lucky. I have rarely, rarely disagreed with my editors. I'm pretty open to stuff like that anyway. I'll tell you a couple times but like, I think, in one of my books I've had a lot of British editors, I've published a fair amount through the UK. And so, sometimes they won't they won't understand something, like there was some kind of, I think I was talking about boxing out in basketball, and they did not understand the reference. And they didn't feel like... I don't know I think they wanted me to take it out, I can't remember exactly what I ended up doing. But, but it was mostly that they just didn't understand the reference.
Another example I will say, The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life is published by Bloomsbury, and my editors are in England. And they, their whole their whole acquisitions team did not like the title Geek’s Guide, because in England, geek means something very different than it does here. Here geeks are kind of cool, you know, I mean, we have a whole geek culture, and it's really not a bad thing. Whereas, when I was first at least trying to get this acquired, they were like, “Oh, I don't know, geeks. I mean, are you sure you want to call this geeks?” and I was like, and I really clung to my guns. I could not think of another title, plus it had been the title I've been using for the Huffington Post blog, I was like, trust me. People will get geeks, especially in America. But you know I've just been lucky and, you know, I think part of is, I'm more open to editing because from early in my career, I've seen how helpful it is, so when I get my edits from my editor I'm not like, “oh no this is gonna be awful.” I'm like, “Oh, great. Let's see what they have to tell me!” you know, so I just tend to approach them with a really open mind.
Ariel: That's great. And so you've talked a little bit about, you just mentioned your Huffington Post column, and you've written, you know, short stories, poems nonfiction. I wondered if the editing process looked very different for those forms than for your long forms.
Stephanie: I think it looks different in that I can really sink my teeth into, believe it or not, shorter things and really let my, my own revising instincts just kind of go, go to town, you know. Keep rewriting something until I feel like I can really obsess over that. And it's not that I don't obsess over my novels or my books, but they're a little, they're a little unwieldy.
Ariel: A small change in a short piece is proportionately a bigger difference.
Stephanie: Right, right, right. And you can also see it evolving, so much, you know, because it's, you can see all of our peace and you can see it all evolving together. Whereas, it's harder to see it in a big piece because while you're doing very necessary work you don't see the big picture.
Ariel: So let's move to the questions that I ask every author I talk to you. First, what do you hate about the editing process?
Stephanie: I hate not having enough words sometimes because I tend to cut. I wrote a lot more long form until I started doing some writing for children, and then writing for children made me very conscious of economy. It was very hard for me to go back to writing more again. So when I go to edit something, man, I'm going to lose 10,000 words out of a novel easy, and I may not have that 10,000 words. Whereas someone else who has like an 80,000-word manuscript, they cut 10,000 words it’s just gonna be great, I'm actually mad at myself for all the stuff I'm cutting because I didn't have enough to begin with. If, if a fairy godmother could wave her wand over me and say you are now going to write, you know, 100,000-word novels, you know, and then cut them down, man, I'd be, I'd be so happy.
Ariel: So is that the most common bit of feedback you receive on your writing?
Stephanie: Just that it's too direct. It's too direct and it's just, it's assuming that I have everyone is in my head and they're not. You know, I'm an only child. I think it's maybe just growing up thinking well yes of course everyone isn't agrees with me, right? I mean this is obvious, instead of having to like get people to come around and my point of view, you know? I'm just like what you mean you don't see things the way that I do? It's that kind of thing.
Ariel: You're just too much boss!
Stephanie: Yeah, that's a little raw way for me to put it, but yeah absolutely.
Ariel: Did you have any last words of advice?
Stephanie: Well if you really want to do this. Don't give up, and just enjoy the process of it because that's really the best part. And that's what will keep you doing it: the process of, if you like to edit, the process of editing; the process of getting your edits back from an editor and seeing, Okay, although it is humbling, seeing like this is fun, I get to see what they thought you know. I mean just enjoy everything and if you can enjoy the process, then, you're more than halfway.
Ariel: I love that. So the last portion of my program is a hot and wholesome gossip corner. Are there any other writers or creators doing something you're excited about? Any shoutouts you want to give or people you want to lift up?
Stephanie: I'm blanking on what I told you. Ah!
Ariel: You mentioned Shelly Connor.
Stephanie: Oh my gosh, yes. Okay, thank you. She is doing fascinating work she has a book coming out called Everyman. And it is coming out in July—I think June or July—and it is, it's just going to turn fiction, the fictional world on its head. I mean it's really amazing. She's just a real—she's a colleague of ours, she came to UCA a few years ago and she's just doing such interesting work. So this is a novel, but she writes screenplays, she wrote a web series, I mean she's just, she's about to break out, and also she's a really great teacher, does really interesting things in the classroom like with multi, multi media and getting students to write multimodally. So yeah, she's someone that I would really—just watch out for that book, it's gonna be great. Because I've heard her read from it several times, and I'm just like, whoa. Yeah.
Ariel: Cool. Well, if you want to find Stephanie, you can follow her on Twitter as @wordamour. She's Stephanie.Vanderslice on Instagram, or check out her website, StephanieVanderslice.com. Read through The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life so many times that it's written on your heart, because it's worth it. And be sure to pick up her novel The Lost Son when it comes out in 2022. Thank you so much for talking with me, Stephanie.
Stephanie: Thank you so much. It was a gift. Thank you, Ariel.
Ariel: If you loved this episode of Edit Your Darlings, why not share it with a friend? Remember to rate and review on Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast fix. For show notes go to edityourdarlings. com, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @editpodcast, or I'm @arielcopyedits. Until next week, cheers!