An Editor's Challenge

I have some good news: I’ve sold another book! Schoolwide Inc. will be publishing my MG novel No One Needed to Know in their digital library targeted to schools and educators next year. How this all came to be is a story that fits neatly with my Write and Rewrite themed blog.

Back in 2004, a tiny little publisher called Denlinger’s Publishers took on my MG novel Special. This was a story based loosely on my experience as a girl with an older Autistic brother. The year this book was released was a hard year for me personally, as my 1st marriage dissolved and I suddenly became a single mother of a 3-year-old and had 3 jobs to make ends meet. I had little time to promote. Then a series of hurricanes hit Florida a couple years later, and they destroyed Denlinger’s facility. They went out of business, and my book went out of print. What to do with a novel that has been published and discarded?

I put it in a drawer for a while. Ten years later, I decided that it was time to pull that book out again and tinker with it.  I rewrote it by changing it to first person and updating it a touch. Then I started submitting it again under a new title and my new name. I learned about Schoolwide Inc., a 20 year old company dedicated to promoting literacy in classrooms and helping reluctant readers. They were looking to start a line of original content and were open to books that had gone out of print.  I sent them mine.

To my elation I heard back pretty quickly from one of the editors who told me he loved my book. He wrote glorious things like, “The world needs more books like this.  It not only entertains, it educates.  And it educates because you have written such an engaging story, with an authentic and sympathetic narrator.”  

But he followed that with: “While I am very excited about this project and hope to continue working with you on it, I feel that in its current form it is not ready for us to accept for publication.”

Oh no!  What? 

“I am inviting you to revise the work and resubmit it for our consideration.” Later, he qualified that it would be a “substantial revision”.  His challenge to me was that if I revised the book (mostly by attacking the 2nd half of the book), he would consider publishing it.  Oh, and he needed it done by October 1st in order to make the list coming out next year.

I looked at the notes he gave me, and they all made perfect sense.  I got right to work. Mostly what he wanted was for me to get away from anything that sounded like I was teaching the reader about Austism or Special Needs and stick to the immediacy of the story. I wound up discarding quite a bit, but I added so much more. I wound up tacking on 11,000 words to the book before I was done.  I sent it back a couple weeks ago. 

Today I signed the contract and stuck it in the mail.  I’m beyond thrilled that this story gets a second life and will be read by children in schools throughout the country. They have plans to do print versions down the road as well.   

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