How Should I Respond To My Editor's Observations?

My editor returned my collection of poems with some suggestions and observations. They are mostly good and positive, which I ate up. But she made a few comments which caused me to reevaluate my entire project.

It is important to use the advice of others who you trust. They will see things you miss and point out things you might not have considered because you are so involved with the project. So, if the advice is honest and sincere you have to give it some respect.

One of her observation was that there was a sadness or tone of depression in many of the poems and that influenced the overall voice of the work.

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I have noticed before that my poems had a lot of phrases that invoked images or feelings of sadness. I was not sure if it was some internal reflection on my part since as their author I had a unique connection with the poems. Now I know the reader finds the same voice of sadness.

This is not good news to me. I wanted the book to be one of encouragement and hope not a rallying flag to some self-pity celebration. If I revisit and edit each poem I will have a big job on my hands and may have to push back publishing to early spring.

I am committed to the vision God gave me to write a collection of poems that can be given out to encourage people and point them to God. For this to happen it has to be a meaningful product that one person will be blessed by and then want to pass it along, not something that will get them depressed and toss the book away.

I believe this project is important and will bless many people. Since anything that is worth having or doing is also worth the price and sacrifice I will take her advice and revise the collection one poem at a time. A large number will require attention. I think some only need a line edited out, or another line added to turn it around. There may be a few poems that I will have to remove completely. I may add one or two that celebrates joy, and hope.

I am grateful for her help in making this book a light and hope for many.

If you are in need of encouragement or know someone who does order a copy today,
 you will glad to have this book.

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What happens when your wife edits your manuscript?

Before I get in trouble with wives everywhere, let me begin by saying that God has blessed me with the gift of a very intelligent, talented, insightful, beautiful and wonderful woman for a wife.

My wife has an English degree in English as a Second Language, so she is competent to look over my collection for punctuation and stuff. I was reluctant to ask her to edit my poetry because I was afraid that she may be biased, or lack objectivity in some particular thing or other. I thought maybe she would not give hard criticism of my work or go to the other extreme and see it as only a favor and not a serious project.


There is a danger that I would pester her about it and keep asking for an update on her progress, which would cause her to become anxious or feel like she is being used. So, I gave it to her and not ask about it until she was done. This would be the same as if I had sent the work away to an editor; I would not call every day and ask about it. I thought it was important to treat her service in the same professional manner, and I feel that is the correct approach on a serious project.

She has finished editing my collection. As I read her comments and discuss it with her I am glad and grateful that we are doing this together. I think she gave me some excellent positive criticism and sincere observations. I will easily go through the collection of poems and make the grammar changes, and over the next few weeks work on some style changes regarding the tone of some the poems to give them a more upbeat feel.

She made several suggestions about organizing the work into chapters with different themes and since I was thinking along those same lines I will be working on that idea for a few weeks.

I am excited about my partnership with her, sometimes spouses do not work well together in business or areas of creativity, and there are times when we have disagreements, just like anybody else, but her help is going to make this into a much more meaningful book for many people.

It may not be everybody's experience that asking a spouse to edit your writing works out well, but in this case, I feel it has.