Hello. Hello, everybody. I hope you’re doing well today. I am so excited because we have a guest today, Laura Portwood-Stacer. You’ve probably heard of her if you have written an academic book or you’re planning to write an academic book. Because she is a writing and publishing consultant who has helped hundreds of scholars develop compelling book proposals and book manuscripts. And her clients have published at so many different academic presses—Duke, Princeton, University of California, Oxford, Yale. Basically, if there’s an academic press out there, there’s probably someone who published who got some guidance from Laura. And her goal is really to demystify the publication process so that academics feel more prepared to submit good book proposals and ultimately good books. She is the author of two books. First, The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors, and second—and the book we’re going to talk about today during our interview—is Make Your Manuscript Work: A Guide to Developmental Editing for Scholarly Writers. So stay tuned, because right after the intro we are going to get straight into the interview. So let’s get into it.

Welcome to Academic Book Writing Simplified. I’m your host, a writing coach and developmental editor who’s here to give you some tough love about the way you write. This podcast is for women and non-binary scholars in academia who are writing academic books but feel as if the process is a little or a lot like a mystery. If you’re ready to trade your confusion and frustration for ease, clarity, and purpose, you’re in the right place. Let’s head into today’s episode.

Welcome, Laura. I am so happy to have you on the podcast today to talk about your new book, Make Your Manuscript Work. So how are you, first of all?

I am good. I am now in the phase of the book is out. I’ve done a lot of the publicity for it, and I’m trying to just enjoy the feeling of satisfaction with having it done.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s an amazing book. I already see people on social media talking about how much they love it and they’re already reading it. I mean, it came out not long ago, few weeks.

It feels like another lifetime.

But yeah, yeah, yeah. People are already like so into it. So that is exciting. Like, good for you.

Thank you.

Congratulations. Be proud of yourself.

I am.

You should be. You should be. So, first of all, I love that you wrote a book about developmental editing, because as you know, I am a developmental editor as well. And I think it’s a process that people don’t understand. And I really liked your explanation in the book, because you talk about it as really having three components. So can you tell us what are those three components?

So I think it’s easiest to understand what developmental editing is when you compare it to the other kinds of editing. So a lot of people, when they think about getting their writing edited, they think about grammar, typos, punctuation, line editing—what some people might call copy editing. That kind of editing, the more mechanical kind, is important. It usually happens at the very end of the process. And when you’re submitting to a publisher, you’re not necessarily going to get a lot of attention to those things right off the bat.

So a developmental edit is really about preparing the manuscript for submission or for peer review if you’ve already been accepted. And it really looks at, what is your project? What’s your argument? What’s the overall structure of the book and the coherence of that structure? And then how are you communicating that argument and that structure to the reader? And so, as you mentioned, I break it down into three things: clarity, structure, and argument. Those are the things that I focus on. That’s what I look at when I’m editing. And that’s what I want people to understand. If they’re going to edit their own work developmentally or try to revise it with those kinds of goals in mind, those are the three areas that I think they should focus on.

That makes so much sense. And I really liked that breakdown, and I appreciated that breakdown. Because as someone who, like you, reads a lot of people’s work and talks to people about their writing and kind of where they’re stuck in the process—sometimes I get the sense that the reason they think the book is not working is not actually the reason the book isn’t working.

Yes.

So for instance, people are like, well, I just don’t know what I’m trying to say. And I’m like, well, you do. You actually just didn’t give yourself the opportunity to say it. So can you talk a little bit about how people kind of misdiagnose what’s going on in their book?

Yeah. I think that often people know more than they think they do, or they haven’t quite seen the forest for the trees. So they may be really deep into a particular chapter or a particular case study, or just they are in the weeds and they can’t step back and really see, how is this all adding up to a bigger argument? And so that’s where I think getting an outside perspective can be really helpful—whether that’s someone like a developmental editor or a writing group, or even just a colleague who is willing to sit down and talk through it with you.

And one of the things that I say in the book is that if you find yourself rewriting the same chapter over and over again, it may be that you’re focusing too much on the micro-level things—like the prose or trying to get the sentences right—and you haven’t actually addressed the bigger structural issues or argument issues. And so you’re kind of spinning your wheels and not really making progress. So sometimes it takes stepping back, doing a little diagnostic work, and really understanding what the real issue is so that you can make progress more efficiently.

That is so true. And I think people have this aversion to structure, and they think that it’s going to impede their creativity, or they’re like, well, I just want to let it flow. And it’s like, you can let it flow, but like a garden hose, right? You need something to shape it.

Exactly.

Right? It’s like, you need a direction. It’s not like it’s going to be this like static, stagnant, rigid thing.

Yeah.

Okay, so can you tell me a little bit about—like, because people are going to be reading this and they’re going to be thinking, “Can I do this on my own? Can I get help?”—what are some signs that it would be helpful to work with a developmental editor?

Yeah. So one of the biggest signs is just feeling stuck and not knowing how to move forward. And that can look a few different ways. You might be stuck because you’re overwhelmed. There’s just too much going on. You’re trying to keep track of too many things. And a developmental editor can help you break it down into manageable pieces, prioritize what you need to do first. You might be stuck because you’re just in your own head and you’ve lost perspective on what you’re actually doing. Or maybe you’ve gotten some feedback that’s confusing or contradictory from peer reviewers or colleagues, and you’re not sure how to interpret it or what to do with it.

So in all of those cases, a developmental editor can help you clarify, focus, make a plan for revision. And I think it’s helpful to think of developmental editing not as someone fixing your work for you, but someone helping you figure out how to do the best version of your work that you want to do. It’s not about making it conform to someone else’s idea of what your book should be. It’s really about helping you realize your vision for the book and making sure that that vision is coming across to readers.

That’s perfect. That’s exactly how I describe it as well. I say, “I’m here to help you write the book you want to write. Not the book I would write, not the book your advisor would write, not the book a random anonymous reviewer would write, but the one that you want to write.”

Yes, exactly.

And I think that’s so freeing for people, because they’re like, oh, I get to make some decisions.

Yes.

And that’s what I loved about the book. The book really emphasizes, like, decision-making—like, you’re going to have to make some choices.

Right.

You can’t just do everything and hope it works out.

Exactly.

Okay, so the book is called Make Your Manuscript Work. It’s out now. Where can people get it?

You can get it anywhere books are sold—your favorite indie bookstore, Bookshop.org, Amazon. You can also go to my website, ManuscriptWorks.com. I have information about the book there and also my newsletter and all of the other stuff that I offer. So that’s a great place to start.

Excellent. And we’ll put the link to the book and to your website in the show notes so people can access it easily. And thank you again for coming and talking to us about your book.

Thank you so much for having me. It was a real pleasure.

You’re welcome. Talk to you soon!