Christine Benner Dixon Member of the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors

Time Reflections

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I don’t know why I’ve been thinking so much about the passage of time lately. There’s no good reason (or at least, no single reason) for it. I just get on philosophical jags now and again, and recently I’ve been paying attention to the way that I experience and think about time.

It could have something to do with my novel-in-progress. The timeline is anything but linear. A few folks who read an earlier draft very politely noted that they sometimes got lost in the chronology of the story. So now each scene in the manuscript has a little illustrated chart showing where we’ve been and where we’re going:

Did I mention that this is a space story? That little gumdrop-beehive-looking-thing with flames shooting out the back is the spaceship that hauls my characters around. (Don’t laugh. If the Borg can fly a giant cube through space, I can have the Gumdrop.)

This visual aid may not make it into the published version of the novel—heck, I haven’t even started shopping this manuscript around, so “published version” is still something of a pipe dream. But the illustration amuses me, and it helps make literal a rather circuitous path I take through time.

As chaotic as it may appear, it makes sense to me to write a story this way. I have a gumdrop-like relationship to time. One minute I’m in 2024, living one day after the next—the next I’m back thirty years riding the bus to middle school. So that’s how I tell my stories.

That said, it does help to have the first-one-thing-then-another chronology written down somewhere. For my space story, I have a detailed chronology of the events (with everyone’s relative ages) in a spreadsheet. For a different project (also a novel, but this one set on Earth, so no flying gumdrops), I recently finished a 39-page, 16,000-word outline detailing the this-then-that events of the story.

This outline traces all the major life events of a family over decades. But I promise you, that’s not how the story is going to come out. Mid-wedding, someone will inevitably tell a story about when they were all kids together. As one character anticipates her career-making trip to Washington, another will still be mulling over a fight with her brother that took place the month before.

The outline is a necessary tool, but it is not a roadmap. So help me, if you try to force me to write the story in order, you will have a rebellion on your hands.

The foldable, moldable nature of time allows me to tell stories in which people themselves are not linear. Everyone knows that that paragon of writerly achievement, character development, is not a straight line. Even if Hildegard begins the story believing she is doomed to failure and ends the story with a newfound trust in herself, she still carries her erstwhile doubts with her into her period of growth. She regresses, even as she learns. She doesn’t know how to move on and forget the past, because no one really does.

That’s the kind of story I like to tell. That’s the kind of story I can’t help telling. As long as someone out there wants to read that kind of story, I’ll be all set.

This post was first published in the newsletter of M.C. Benner Dixon.

SELF-PROMO: WHITMAN, EMERSON, AND THE ART OF ASKING

These days, authors are expected to do most of their own promotion when a book comes out, especially if they are publishing with small presses. We design our own swag, set up our own interviews, and toot our own horns. For a group of people who tend towards introversion and self-criticism, this can be excruciating.

Engraved image of a young Walt Whitman with hat askew and hand on hip.
Portrait Of Walt Whitman. Source: Library of Congress

Some authors, however, take to self promotion quite naturally. Take Walt Whitman, for example. When he published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855, no one knew who this peculiar Brooklyn poet was, and Whitman was keen to correct that problem. Oddly enough, Whitman didn’t put his name on the cover of the book (or on the title page), but the frontispiece did feature a nearly full-body portrait of the poet.

The portrait makes a statement. Whitman is dressed as a laborer, not a scholar. He wears no jacket or tie. He stands akimbo—his left hand sunk in his pocket, his right is propped on his hip. This is how he chose to sign his work—not as a name but as an entity, a full-fleshed person who needs to be engaged as such.

Image of a middle-aged Ralph Waldo Emerson in a suit.
Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Source: Library of Congress

When the book was published, Whitman sent copies out to writers whom he admired, including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson’s 1844 essay “The Poet,” which called for a national poet who could unite the good and the bad of the entire country in his writing, felt like a personal call to action for Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass was his answer.

And Emerson loved it. He wrote as much to Whitman in glowing terms.

Dear Sir,

I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of “Leaves of Grass.” I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. […] I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. […] I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty.

Full text of the letter

Let’s pause for a moment to appreciate what an incredible thing it must have been for Whitman to receive this letter from his idol. These are unqualified words of praise. There are no underhanded compliments, no condescending pats on the head. It’s pure and effusive appreciation from one writer to another. And it was everything Whitman had hoped for.

Whitman was so proud of this letter that not only did he reprint the thing in the New York Tribune, he pasted copies of it into the front of numerous first edition copies of Leaves of Grass, and—when the second edition came out—he embossed Emerson’s phrase “I greet you at the beginning of a great career” in gold letters on the spine.

The open cover of a second edition of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman showing the words "I Greet You at the Beginning of A Great Career. R.W. Emerson" embossed in gold on the spine.
Leaves of Grass, Second Edition. Source: Drew University, via NPR

Here, we ought to stop and chastise Walt Whitman, because he did these things without asking permission. There are conflicting reports as to whether Emerson himself was outraged about Whitman’s brazenness or whether it was his friends who held the grudge on his behalf, but the principle stands: you can’t do that. People have a right to expect that the things they say to you privately will not be published far and wide just because they are flattering to you. You have to ask.

And that’s the moral of this story. We, as authors, have to ask. Nothing is ours by rights. We have to ask people to read what we write. We have to ask our readers to tell their friends about our writing. We have to ask our mentors to say nice things about us that we can publish on our book’s cover. But this isn’t a bad thing. It means that we don’t actually have to do our self-promotion alone. There are plenty of people who will be delighted to help us usher our writing out into the world. They just need to be asked.

Not that every single person you ask will say yes. Some people are grumpy. Some people have said yes so many times that they need a break. But someone out there will be ready to help just as soon they know what you need.

Does it really work? Check out the blurbs for Millions of Suns on our book page.

Whitman was so impatient with this process, however, that he ended up writing several celebratory reviews of Leaves of Grass himself, which he also published, anonymously, at the end of the second edition—along with Emerson’s full letter. Not only is this not a good look (we’re still judging Whitman for it nearly 170 years later), it shortchanges the process of building a real community for ourselves as writers.

If you are struggling with the burden of self-promotion (I know I am), I encourage you to be like Walt Whitman. Identify the people who have influenced you, whom you admire, and whose opinion you crave. Let them know if your writing is an answer to a question they asked. Tell them what they mean to you. Invite them into a genuine relationship with you. Be more than a name on the title page. Be a full-fleshed, living person behind your book.

And also, don’t be like Walt Whitman. You aren’t the one and only Poet (or Essayist or Novelist or Memoirist), here to save the world. You are one among a multitude. And the more there are of us, the better. Your community will embrace you if you ask. They will lift you up.

But you have to ask.

This blog post was first published at https://www.bennerdixon.com/blog/self-promo 

How to Use Google Docs: Sharing & Editing

Love it or loathe it, you’ve probably been asked to use Google Docs at some point in your life, and you’ll probably be asked to do it again.

Some professional editors refuse to work in Google Docs. There’s a reason for that. For one thing, the “Suggesting” mode is a poor substitute for Word’s “Track Changes” feature. For another, the formatting can get squirrely for more complicated projects. Also, editors love their macros, and Google Docs doesn’t allow for such fancy tricks.

But for a lot of people, the reluctance to use Google Docs is less about the quality of the tool and more about good, old-fashioned human nature—we stick with what we know. But since we often don’t have a choice about using Google Docs, I’m going to help you get to know it a little better.

HOW DO YOU CREATE A GOOGLE DOC?

  • To make your own Google Doc, you need to have a Google account. (To view or edit someone else’s Doc, no account is necessary.)

  • Visit any Google page and look for your account icon.

  • Click on the grid of dots (some like to call it the “waffle”) next to your icon to open the app panel. Select either Docs or Drive.

A Google Search page with the App Launcher opened. Arrows pointing to the App Launcher grid as well as to the Drive and Docs apps.

  • Google Docs makes it pretty easy to create a blank document or work from a template, depending on your needs.

Google Docs dashboard. A large arrow pointing to the multicolor plus sign for creating a blank document.

  • It’s a little more complicated in Google Drive, but creating your document here allows you to put it straight into your file system, and you won’t have to move the document later. (I’ll cover organization tips in a follow-up blog.)

Google Drive dashboard with the dropdown menu for "New" open. Arrow pointing to Google Docs and the expandable menu for a blank document or template

WHY USE GOOGLE DOCS?

Google Docs can be very useful, especially if:

  • Multiple people are working on the same project.

  • Two or more of those people are editing simultaneously.

  • You need to edit your document from several different computers or on your phone.

  • Any collaborators don’t have Microsoft Word (or another similar program).

A Google Doc is fully accessible on the internet (you can work on someone else’s Doc even without a Google account), it updates instantaneously as people edit, and the file owner can control who has permission to edit, comment on, or view the document. If you’ve ever gotten into an email chain with infinite “version2_final_PRMfinal” files being sent back and forth, you understand why this is valuable.

There are other tools and services that provide some or all of these features, but as far as I have seen, Google is the best and most accessible option.

HOW DO YOU SHARE A GOOGLE DOC?

  • Use the share button to add collaborators and assign roles.

    • Viewer: can read the document but make no changes.

    • Commenter: can add comments and suggestions, but their changes must be approved to take effect.

    • Editor: can make any changes they want without approval.

    • Owner: created the document, has full editing privileges, and are the only one who can delete the file.

An open Google Doc with the "Share" dialog box activated. Arrows pointing to the blue share button in the background, the collaborator who has been added, and the dropdown menu with permission options.

  • You can also make the document available to anyone with the link.

    • The “Anyone with the link” general access still allows you to limit how users interact with the document: Viewer, Commenter, Editor.

Sharing dialog box with the "General access" dropdown menu open and an arrow pointing to the option "Anyone with the link"

  • You can change permissions at any time.

COMPOSING IN A GOOGLE DOC

Basic toolbar and menu from the top of a Google Doc.

Once you have a document going, the composition part is fairly straightforward and unsurprising. You have controls for font, formatting, images, etc.—either in the toolbar across the top of the document or accessible through the top menus.

Note that there are keyboard shortcuts for many of these controls. If you use these commands enough, it makes sense to learn how to italicize, realign the text, or create subscripts from the keyboard. But for the casual user, learning the full set of shortcuts isn’t worth the brain space.

Expanded "Format" menu with the "Text" option expanded. Arrows highlighting the menu item, the "Text" dropdown, and the keyboard shortcut for "Bold"

EDITING IN GOOGLE DOCS

The real magic of Google Docs is its ability to manage multiple simultaneous editors.

You can see who is currently viewing the document at the top. A color-coded pin will tell you where in the document each viewer/editor is.

Open Google Doc with multiple users. Arrows pointing to the user icons, indication of last edit, and the colored pins for each user in the document.

Depending on the permissions that have been set, users will interact with the text in the mode of “Editing,” “Suggesting,” or “Viewing.” You don’t always want every team member editing willy-nilly. Sometimes, it’s best to have one person approve (or reject) any changes made to the document. If that’s how your project is running, set permissions to “Commenter,” not “Editor,” for everyone except the final decision-maker.

To set permissions, see “HOW DO YOU SHARE A GOOGLE DOC?” above.

HOW TO CHANGE YOUR EDITING ROLE

Use the dropdown in the toolbar to control your editing role.

Close up screenshot of the editing role dropdown in the Google Doc toolbar. Large arrow pointing to the pencil icon. Choices include "Editing," Suggesting," and "Viewing."

Editors can change their own role to “Suggesting” so that their changes remain visible for review. This is similar to using Track Changes in Word.

Note: Permissions only go one way. An editor can temporarily shift to a more restricted type of interaction, but someone who started out with only Commenter or Viewer privileges cannot make themselves an Editor.

When editing in “Commenting” or “Suggesting” mode, edits to the text will show up as suggested changes (color-coded and tagged with the user’s name), which the editors may accept or reject using the check mark or ex symbols on the box to the right of the text.

A Google Doc with a suggested change highlighted in purple. Arrows connect the purple user to the change and the comment box referring to the change.

Note: if you are working towards a specific word count, the count will not be accurate until you have accepted changes.

These changes will happen in real-time. If two people are in the document at the same time, you will actually see the other editor’s progress and all their half-formed sentences—and they will see yours. It’s very embarrassing.

HOW TO COMMENT ON SUGGESTED CHANGES

All suggested edits come with a comment box that appears in the right margin. If you have a comment about a change (your own or anyone else’s), you can add it in the comment box. Simply click on the suggestion notification box, and a reply option will appear.

Close up screen shot of a reply to a suggested edit. An arrow points to the blue "Reply" button.

Don’t forget to hit “Reply.” Unlike typing on the live document, in-process comments are not visible to anyone else until you click the button. If you try to close the document without officially submitting all of your comments, you will get a warning.

COMMENTING ON GOOGLE DOCS

If you want to leave a comment without making any edits, first highlight the relevant piece of text.

Highlighted phrase in a Google Doc. Arrows point to the highlighted words, the comment icon in the toolbar, and the three response icons in the right margin of the document.

As soon as you highlight something in the document, three little icons will appear. The blue flag with the plus sign is for leaving comments. The yellow emoji is for leaving a reaction. The green flag with the pen is for switching into Suggesting mode.

You can also use the comment button in the toolbar, though I have never—not once—done it this way. I do, however, use the keyboard shortcut for commenting quite often.

A posted comment in a Google Doc.

PRO TIP: You can submit a comment or reply with Command-Enter or Control-Enter (depending on whether you are on a PC or Mac). That’ll save you a few mouse clicks.

DOWNLOADING A GOOGLE DOC

When you’re done composing and editing with your team and you’re ready to send your masterpiece on, you can either email the shareable link (set general sharing permissions to “View” first) or download your file in whatever format you need—including as a Word file (.docx).

Dropdown "File" menu in a Google Doc. Arrows point to the "File" menu item, the "Download" option, and the file format options.

Note: The formatting does not always translate perfectly—check the downloaded document before you send it out to anyone too important.

MORE GOOGLE DOCS TIPS . . . COMING SOON

This blog post is the first in a series on using Google Docs. Keep an eye out for upcoming blog posts on the topic of:

  • Tracking Versions & Notifications

  • Organizing your Google Drive

  • Using Heading Styles, Headers, & Footers

  • Modifying Default Settings

If you have a request for a post about a specific skill or question or you would like some one-on-one coaching, please contact me.

This post was first published at www.bennerdixon.com/blog/how-to-use-google-docs-sharing-and-editing 

Co-Authoring: How to Write with a Partner

Since January of 2021, my dear friend Sharon Fagan McDermott and I have been writing a book together. It’s a collection of essays, each on a different element of writing. Now, when we started this project, there was no guarantee that collaborative writing would work. Writers are a notoriously bull-headed and touchy breed, and we can be very picky about things going our way. But it did work. And I thought I’d let you in on a few of our secrets.

Choose your partner carefully.

I wouldn’t have agreed to do this project with just anyone. Sure, Sharon and I were already friends before we started writing together, but the mere fact of our friendship was not enough to ensure a strong co-writing relationship. However, Sharon and I had worked together in the past, putting together presentations and shaping curriculum, and so we went into our collaboration knowing that we were compatible as colleagues.

That said, our friendship was essential to our success. Perhaps if we were both purely pragmatic people, it wouldn’t have mattered if we liked each other or not, but since we are both emotional and sensitive creatures, we benefited from having a strong working relationship and genuine friendship as our foundation.

Establish a clear vision.

Before we wrote a single word, Sharon and I spent a fair amount of time talking about what the project would be, who it would be for, what topics we wanted to cover, and other matters of vision. It wouldn’t be a writing handbook, we decided, but we would keep the writing classroom in mind. The essays would be personal; we would write about the ways that the practice of writing moves beyond mechanics and theory and into our lives. We would reach far and wide in the essays, not limiting ourselves to a certain kind of approach to craft writing. We would write short essays so that they could be used in the classroom. All of this planning helped keep the entire writing process moving in the right direction.

Respect boundaries.

Writing is personal. It can be hard to receive critique when it edges too close to criticism. Knowing that our friendship was key to maintaining our working relationship, Sharon and I decided not to cast each other into the role of editor. We gave one another room to say her piece without nitpicking or heavy-handed “suggestions.”

The nature of our project meant that, for the most part, we could do the writing of our essays independently. Every Saturday morning for months on end, we met on Zoom and read our essays to each other, asked questions of one another, reflected on where the energy was dropping or how different parts were holding together. But then we backed off and let the other person work. Mostly, we delighted in each other’s words and exclaimed over the ways that our essays spoke to each other, despite having been written separately.

It’s important to note that we did have other people to provide feedback in this process. We convened a group of readers to test out a few chapters of the book. We have had feedback from editors. I brought one of my essays to one of my writer’s groups. And we both have individuals in our lives who can offer additional critique for us. But that didn’t have to be one another, and it was better for us that it wasn’t.

Share the work.

Because we wrote our essays independently, we avoided some of the pitfalls of competing ego and style that can crop up in other co-authoring arrangements. Only the introduction has a single co-authorial voice, and this short piece of blended writing might have proven more difficult if we hadn’t shared control over the piece. We started by talking through what we wanted to say about our book: writing is joyful, we invite our readers to contribute to the discussion of craft, here’s some important information about how the book is laid out, and so on. We both took notes—I by typing, Sharon by hand—and compared our key points after we had talked through the introduction, making a kind of outline for ourselves. We then went through the outline, adding specific language around the ideas and transcribing these lines into the notes. It was a messy semi-draft, not something fit for public consumption but truly a joint creation, reflective of both of our ideas.

Next, I (because Sharon was heading into the beginning of the new school year) drafted the introduction based on our conversation, adding a few new touches here and there as it felt appropriate. The next time we met, we read the introduction aloud, and we talked through it again, identifying places that felt good and those that felt redundant or unnecessary and debating the best solution. Afterward, I sent the file to Sharon for her additions, comments, reflections. We went back and forth like this until we were satisfied. Sometimes we agreed on what changes were needed; sometimes we didn’t. But we tweaked and clarified and adjusted until we could both stand by what was being said.

Trust one another.

As writers and teachers, Sharon and I understand that there is not just a single way to write well. We write differently, but we like that difference. We trust one another’s instincts. So when the other person makes a choice that is different from ours, we know it comes from a skilled writer and is worthy of consideration. That attitude made it a lot easier to entertain the other’s suggestions to, say, rearrange the essays within the chapter or cut potentially problematic language. We knew the project was safe with the other person—no need to get defensive. Our mutual trust was rewarded. We were able to be honest, both in our own writing and in our discussion of the writing, and the book is better for it.

Leave room for joy.

Not every writing project needs to be joyful to be successful, but this one sure was. We had a blast working together. If you are launching into a collaborative project, leave room for the possibility that it’s going to be fun. Creativity feeds on creativity, and the result can be downright electric.

 

This blog post first appeared at www.bennerdixon.com/post/co-authoring

Editors are not Your Enemy – How to Take Constructive Feedback Like a Pro

Writing is personal. It is. This is especially true of creative work, in which a writer bares their soul in 12-point serif font, but even academic writing, which is a record of one’s thought processes, diligence, and reasoning skills, can leave one feeling a little exposed. For this reason, it can be hard to have someone read your work and tell you what needs revision—the implication being: your writing is currently bad; your thoughts are bad; you are bad. This (probably) isn’t true, of course, but writers fall into this spiral of self-pity anyway. I have seen it happen to people in writing workshops. I have seen it happen to students. I have even seen it happen to people who have hired me to edit their writing.

Now, not everyone feels this way, which is good, but if you are someone who plunges into self-doubt whenever you are edited (or critiqued), I want to offer a few alternative narratives to the one you’ve been telling yourself.

Here are some things that I, as an editor, want you to know:

  • I am approaching your work as an editor, not a reader—and those are two different things. You have asked me to help improve this piece, and so I go in looking for something that could be changed. When I’m reading for pleasure or to gain insight on a particular issue, I treat the text differently. I let the text lead without stopping to correct its posture or its dance steps. Sure, it bothers me if the text is wildly out of rhythm or keeps stepping on my toes, but otherwise, I adapt myself to its idiosyncrasies, come to enjoy them, even. As an editor, I’m going to challenge you on those things to be sure you want them in your writing. But if you tell me you do, they’re yours to keep.

  • I am on your side. When I’m editing, my number one goal is to figure out what you are trying to say and to help you say it. I go in hungry for your sentiments, your aesthetic, your line of thinking. I will highlight contradictions in your writing, not because I think you’re wrong about a particular point but because you think you’re wrong, apparently. I will draw your attention to a convoluted phrase, not because I am personally offended by it but because I think it’s obscuring your point, and I want you to make your point.

  • I find your writing exciting. I know it’s easy to brush off praise as perfunctory—just something people say to be nice. But when I tell a client I enjoyed working on their project, I mean it. I love seeing how you see the world. My work provides me with a constant stream of new ideas from interesting and intelligent people; it’s kind of dreamy. Sometimes I can’t help myself, and I’ll sprinkle in little exclamations of appreciation in my comments, but you aren’t paying me to compliment you, so I try not to get carried away.

  • I don’t expect you to take all of my suggestions. I’m here to give you options, not instructions. I trust your judgment.

Tips:

  • Choose well. If you run into an editor/reader who is a real jerk with their feedback, stop working with them. Good feedback doesn’t have to hurt.

  • Set boundaries. Tell your editor/reader what you want from them. If your piece is almost finished and you are not looking to add or remove sections or rework your argument, say so.

  • Recast the scene. If you are getting feedback in writing, imagine it coming from the sweetest person you know. A change in tone can make a suggestion easier to take.

Even with all of these reassurances, it can still be hard to quiet the voice of self-doubt. I know. The lessons of self-love can take a lifetime to learn. Keep trying, keep writing, keep saying what needs to be said. And if you need a cheerleader (who also corrects your grammar, questions your logic, and suggests reorganization), let me know.

First published at www.bennerdixon.com/post/editors-are-not-your-enemy on Aug. 4, 2021

Latest Posts

Time Reflections

October 2, 2024

SELF-PROMO: WHITMAN, EMERSON, AND THE ART OF ASKING

November 2, 2023

How to Use Google Docs: Sharing & Editing

December 8, 2022

Co-Authoring: How to Write with a Partner

April 15, 2022

Editors are not Your Enemy – How to Take Constructive Feedback Like a Pro

November 10, 2021

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