S2 E2 Finding the Right Editor for You and Your Book Makes All the Difference in the World

Show Transcript:

Finding the Right Editor for You and Your Book Makes All the Difference in the World

Robyn Vie-Carpenter-Brisco Talks About Her Own Writing Journey, and How Critically Important it Was for Her to Connect With Her Editor in Order to Realize Her Book’s Potential

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Invisible Stories Season 2 Episode 2 with Robyn Vie-Carpenter-Brisco

Today’s podcast is with Robyn Vie-Carpenter Brisco, a spiritual life coach who utilizes the “5 Principles Of Joy” to unlock her clients potential and inspire them toward growth and fulfillment, through mindfulness and manifestation techniques using stones and crystals. She is the author of Let’s get stoned: Using Stones and Crystals to Create a Life That Rocks!

In this podcast, Robyn and I jump right into questions of editing and writing in a way that realizes your true purpose. Robyn shares:

• How she switched gears mid project and wrote the book she feels she was meant to write instead.
• How she learned to trust her editors and let them do their job, and how to recognize the fact that editors are hired for a reason: so writers can focus on writing!
• Why Hybrid Publishing was the right track for her book.

Let’s Get Stoned by Robyn Vie-Carpenter-Brisco

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Key Takeaways

• [00:02:07] Robyn: I finally feel like I understand what I’ve been made for now. It’s a, this is exactly the kind of stuff that, um, That I work with people on, you know, like fear and pain and anxiety about future and what are you going to do about it? That kind of stuff. So when I wrote my book, it was, uh, because I love stones and crystals and people loved stones and crystals and people are always telling me they’re really into quote unquote stones and crystals. So, and then when I asked them, so what do you do with them every day? There was like crickets, you know, like it it’s like stones, so it’s our tool. Right. And really beautiful tool. But when you on a shelf and you don’t actually engage with them, it’s just like buying like a hammer. And putting it on a shelf and showing everybody look at my pretty hammer. Okay. And then when you need them, the hammer, something in the wall, you still use your shoe because you put your pretty hammer on the shelf. Um, so you know, stones and crystals are tools and engage with, and I realized that people get so caught up in the intentions. Often, you know, they go into a store and they say, Ooh, I need to love stone. I need to blah, blah stone. I need that, whatever, it’s  that on the sign when they, but then they don’t really know what to do with it. So then they’re missing the biggest thing. Part of having stones and crystals, in my opinion, which is the literal, the engaging with the stone and the mindset tool that it can be if you engage with it.
• [00:05:29] Robyn: Wooly stones eat anyway, um, the, the, the secret, the answer is rock lobster. Oh, uh, um, so that’s about, you know, cleansing and charging and all of those kinds of things, because there’s like actual upkeep that you have to do in order to the stones to be working optimally, but then it’s things like, you know, how do you choose, you know, what is this for? I don’t understand. And then, then, then there’s the mindset stuff, you know, it’s about gratitude. You know, one of the first things they write. It was everything begins with gratitude because that’s really where everything starts. And I based it off on, um, what I teach people, what I call the five principles of joy. So my book is really an out, like a looking arm of kind of stuff that I teach my clients when I’m working with my, um, my clients.
• [00:08:05] Robyn: You know, I think that one of my biggest strengths is, is the ability to, to break seemingly esoteric things down into actionable understanding.
• [00:10:25] Robyn: So that you can just fit, do the writing and then, and then the cleaning up and the editing and moving things around and taking things out or wherever that all comes after, but you need to actually get it done first. And so that’s pretty much what I did, you know, I just kind of head down and I wrote, and then, and then the editing process.
• [00:12:47] Robyn: And I, and I feel though that, um, The reason it was poking at me the most was because it was the, it was the thing that I had the most energy, and activity  around at that time. Yeah. When I was talking about joy and I had started writing the joy book, this was the, these are the first conversations that I was having with people about the idea of joy.  So I spent a lot of time on it, but then as time went on, I realized the moment that piece was so important and that, and that the, the tools, the stump using the stones and crystals was, was like, The answer to, to a lot of people’s missing, understanding about things. And so I knew that my, I know I’m always called to be a teacher, right. And I knew that the thing I needed to teach people more than anything first was stones and crystals in your hand, get them around you. Focus on intention, do the, you know, do this for yourself because everything else you do will grow out of it. But the, the writing itself, literally I did the majority of it in four days, but that was because I shut myself off. My spouse went out of town. Literally didn’t leave the house. Well, okay. I left the house to get some ice cream because I ended up with like a real hankering for ice cream somewhere weirdly in the middle. But otherwise I just. The thing. And then I was floored by how much I knew. Yeah.
• [00:16:02] Robyn: Then I had to yeah, a little meditation, do some journaling, ask myself some questions and really figure out. Um, what is it that you’re really trying to do right now? You know, what is it that you’re really supposed to be teaching right now? What is, where are you, where are you best served right now?  and it was writing this down and writing it down. Like I had, it literally was like having a baby in theory, because I’ve never had one. So I, but, but it was like, I felt so much relief and peace. After I like the last period and I had said, I, I wrote it, which is funny because you know, I’ve had that moment now multiple times because, you know, I wrote it and then he edited it and then, Oh, more edits. And then…
• [00:17:39] Robyn: But to me, the biggest time and effort component is the editing. And it’s so, the most emotionally intense wretched part of this process, which I know every author I work with, I warn them up down sideways backwards, you name it to just say, listen, I want to make sure that you’re like legitimately prepared for what lies ahead, because you think the writing part is the hard part, but it’s really, to me, I think it’s the editing.
• [00:19:02] Robyn: So I was super paranoid at the idea of having an editor, right. Because I knew what I wanted to say, and I didn’t want anybody else changing what I had to say. And that’s, I don’t have that anymore. I send stuff to editors and you know, they edit it and it goes out and they took out words I didn’t even notice were there. I didn’t, you know, but every word was precious to me. I meant everything that I was attached to and I would know what word was missing when it was out. And the deal is, you know, as long as you have a good relationship with the person that’s editing and that’s really important. You know, I’m choosing editor is really important. It has to be somebody that actually cares about your project.
• [00:21:29] Robyn: There’s all of this stuff that goes in between that most people don’t know anything about because they’re only used to the idea of Being a writer and a book being published. You know, that the whole public, the whole process in between is not something that most people are familiar with. So then when you start it, you don’t really realize all the pieces involved.
• [00:22:06] Robyn: 110%, but I’m always telling people, there are reasons that that’s a job. You know, like this is a job and that’s a job and that’s a job and what do you really want to be doing versus what we can do, just because you can figure it out Doesn’t mean that you ought to be spending your time, energy, and effort, figuring it out when you be spending that same time, energy, and effort doing the thing, that your thing and letting somebody else do the thing that’s their thing. Yeah. I mean, all the time I’m saying this, because I believe in experts.
• [00:25:39] Robyn: Especially now people are looking for the niche. Like they’re looking for the thing that their thing and somebody that understands their thing. I mean, there are people who’ve made their whole careers on crap I would never read. It’s not crap, but it’s just stuff, you know I would never read. Historical. Like, I love history, but, but I, there are volumes and volumes of books that get published about stuff I would never read, but there are people who like inhale that stuff and devoted fans to that kind of stuff and can make a whole career on stuff that I would never write about. Actuary science.
• [00:27:37] Robyn: Well, because it becomes about the editor and see, that’s the thing. The thing is we all, you fall into our own ego traps. You know, especially if you work on some project that was really incredible and you got recognition for how wonderful the job you did on it. And maybe you got paid that money for something. But what happens is we get into our own ego space. And then of course, when somebody comes to us asking for assistance, now we’ve become, Oh, I know this. Listen to what I have to say, because I’m the expert and you are the novice and you’ve come to me for help. So isn’t this what you paid me for. And the answer is for an editor particularly no, an editor’s job is to make you sound better than the way you’ve been expressing yourself, you know. Often, we have the words. We don’t necessarily put them down in exactly the way we need them at the time that we wrote them. We know what we meant. There are so many words. That’s often there might be a word that’s better than the one that you chose. And it will mean exactly what you meant and he didn’t have to have all that extra. And then you can cut it. You use the one word you can cut out two paragraphs of explaining because one word made all the difference. So an editor’s whole job is to help you sound like a better version of yourself. Get your point across in a better, more clear and concise way. Not to tell you you’re doing it wrong.