Note to First Time Authors: Cramming Doesn’t Help!

 

As a professional editor, here are a couple things I see in the manuscripts of far too many first time authors:

 

The first thing I see, almost invariably, is that first time authors put into their books (several or more times throughout them) the fact that they’re an AUTHOR… an actual AUTHOR... writing a book!!!! (I covered this topic in my last blog, so I won’t belabor the point here.)

 

Reminder to first time authors:

every single person who writes a book is an author!

Although becoming an author (for the first time, especially!) is a big deal for you, it’s hardly a momentous occasion to the person who’s looking for a good book to read.

 

Bottom Line: the more often you can restrain your enthusiasm for proclaiming “I’m writing an actual book here!” the better your readers will like you…and it.

 

Pat yourself on the back in a blog post, if you must. (Or better yet, just keep it in your personal journal. You’ll be glad you did. So will your readers.)

 

The other thing that first time authors often get wrong is making the mistake that your first book will be your ONLY book.

 

I’ve written more than sixteen books. All of them are different (except for the six-volume series KELLEY PHONE TAG: The Rest of the Story) because they’re on different topics.

 

Even though most of them are memoirs, none of them are on the same parts of my life.

 

Some are about animals, some about an actor, some about working in Hollywood, and some are self-help books.

 

If I’d tried to cram them all into a single book, it would have resulted in a monumental hodgepodge of unrelated topics.

 

As a first time author, you might think you have only one book in you–the one that’s taking up all the room in your head right now, the one you MOST feel compelled to get down on paper.

 

But as you write it, your mind will dredge up other peripheral stories, thoughts and insights that don’t belong in it.

 

The solution: keep a small notebook to jot down the outliers; they can become the bases for your next books. They aren’t useless; they’re just misplaced. They simply aren’t germane to the story you’re presently telling.

 

I’m struggling with the editing of a manuscript right now because it contains elements that don’t belong in it. Fortunately, not a whole lot of them, but enough to make the editing more problematic than it would otherwise be.

 

The author is a truly amazing woman with at least three books in her. She’s a member of the military. She adopted a baby. She’s a cancer survivor. All of these topics are fodder for a series of books.

 

Unfortunately, she tried to cram them all into a single book about going through the hell-scape of breast cancer treatment.  The result: the reader feels like the steel ball in a pinball machine: as soon as she heads in one direction, something comes out of left field to shoot her in another direction.

 

So, I’m suggesting that she make some changes to help the reader along, either by putting her direct experience of breast cancer treatment into a different font than the informational parts (about the various treatment options, side effects, etc.), which she could also set as sidebars. And I’ve shown her places where what she has written should be taken out entirely, since they’re on different topics. She’s the final arbiter, of  course, but I want it to be the best book she can make it, and these hints will certainly help.

 

When writing a  nonfiction book, it’s important to determine ahead of time what you have to share and what your reader will want to know about your topic. Anything beyond that should be considered extraneous, and fodder for another book.

 

First time author: You don’t have just one book in you.

You’re a multifaceted individual with lots to share.

Share it in the right place, with the right people. When you do that, you develop a following and a fandom.

 

When you cram everything together, your reader loses interest in parts of it and come away less satisfied than they otherwise will.

 

Don’t eject your eager reader from your story by making its trajectory so erratic that they get confused and cranky.

 

Make sense?