Maria Boers Morris

My goal with any project is not to churn something out and get that paycheck, but to also engage my mind. I enjoy the work. Often a challenging fact check or fading "story" line gets me more energized than straight work. The greater the challenge, the more I can engage my ability to analyze information, and see detail as well as the overall picture to any given work.

No matter how small the job, I want to experience the sheer pleasure of working, and the satisfaction of a job well done.

But it is more than that. I love writing in all its aspects. I've had enjoyable arguments about comma placements. A friend and I would get so worked up discussing language use, we'd stand and pace, engaged and excited. Once, I was discussing editing with a writing coach. I had her laughing. We were laughing.

The laughter has not come without pain. The process of editing and writing can be full of sacrifice. But it is worth it. Years ago, I came face to face with one of my biggest challenges, one that would involve rediscovering language use as well as embracing the need for often brutal editing. My second novel was rejected.

I had taken a long hiatus from writing. I worked, got married, and was starting a family. One day I finished a novel. I knew the story was good. I was less happy about the writing, but figured my job was to send it out. This I did, a naive, new writer. My first short story had long since been rejected, but my second was published. I had hopes.

It would be false to say I was completely ignorant about the industry. However, I know a great deal more now that I've been involved with the process and the people for the past five years. The little I knew did not prepare me.

The rejection letter said, "We'd had high hopes off the query letter...but the sample chapters didn't seem to be working at quite the high level we would have wished." The words slammed me up against everything I feared, as well as what I had imagined. A few days prior I'd also had the cold realization of how little I remembered of English grammar. Both illuminated the fork in the road.

I had a choice: I could give up writing, be a mommy and pretend to be happy. The other path was insane. It wasn't a healthy steady climb, with a few breathers and we'll get there. This was piton and hammer work... and I didn't know how to climb. That is a light way of putting it, actually. Even now I can look back and my throat tightens. There really wasn't any other choice. My passion had to become Language Use. Accuracy, Detail, Story Line, Characterization. All of it. Fiction and nonfiction.

My own path in writing and editing has been strewn cut words, paragraphs and pages, bodies of beloved characters, whole novels. Some of those cuts have been brutal, but I didn't back down once I knew they were necessary. I did it and bled.

I am unafraid to make changes in my own work, though sometimes it does take convincing. I'm unafraid to suggest them for clients. I am also aware that my say is not the final one. For myself and my clients, my editing stance is decidedly "Funny Gnome." (Building upon the gnomish editing idea is "Bombshell in Gnome Clothes.") Sure sometimes the process of editing is difficult. But creating the final product is fantastic. It offers a satisfaction that a lesser job can never bring. And if the act of editing is ever painful to a client, I also know the joy experienced afterwards. I'd never take that away from them.

I now have that rejection letter framed upon my wall. It motivates me. I know how very far I have come.

All content on this web site is under copyright: © 2006 by Maria Boers Morris