Editors Who Write, with Karen Parker

This week's ep is all about how we balance our editing, coaching, and writerly selves and businesses! 😍

We discuss the query trenches, writing routines and habits, whether you need to be a writer to coach writers, and lots more besides!

Here are a few things we mention:

Karen's coaching: https://www.karenaparker.com/book-coaching

Mythcreants community: https://www.patreon.com/Mythcreants

Mythcreant's idea of a magnum opus: https://mythcreants.com/blog/six-tips-for-writing-your-first-novel-and-series/

Karen's Captured Phantoms fund and 25 ways to resist in 2025: https://www.karenaparker.com/blog/25-ways-to-resist-in-2025

My Pay-It-Forward fund: https://www.thenarrativecraft.com/pay-it-forward-fund

Transcript

Editors Who Write with Karen Parker

Andy: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome, folks, to the Free Lancer. This podcast discusses all things publishing through a social justice lens. My name is Andy Hodges. I'm a cultural anthropologist turned fiction writer and editor. I own a book editing business called the Narrative Craft. Please, please, please subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode, and sign up for my fortnightly newsletter in the show notes if you want more regular updates.

So this is episode three of season two, and I'm here with the wonderful Karen Parker. Again. Hello. 

Karen: I'm back. 

Andy: Yay. And today. That was a wild, wild laugh. Okay, so here. Yeah. Today we're gonna be discussing our own work a little bit 'cause we are both editors slash book coaches who all also write. So [00:01:00] do you want to start off by talking a little bit about your writing career and background?

I know that you've written two novels and I just wanna hear, hear it all. I'm here for it. 

Karen: I've written two novels, but I've only queried one. Um, and I say two novels because the one that I'm querying is my MFA thesis. Mm-hmm. Was literally a part of my graduate degree, so I had to finish the thing.

In some way, shape, or form. And then the other one, um, has not, man, I haven't thought about that one in, in years. That one was a 50,000 word draft written during a November of yesteryear, and I've never, I have not picked that one up. However on my press kit page, on my website, I have a couple of ideas that I'm toying around with.

One is a prequel to my thesis, and then another one is  like a workshops of empire meets [00:02:00] Bridgerton. Like I wanted to combine the colonial aspects of writing and MFA programs, but put in a Bridgerton setting so that there's agents who are matchmaking with authors. It's just infant stages, but like, that's where my mind goes with, with stuff. I love that idea. I love the idea, but like, can I do it, can I pull it off? That's the question. Uh, because I haven't written a word of that, but I've also written a few poems for maybe a chapter book that might explore my time in Japan and my gender identity. Definitely gonna work on my memoir because I spent three years over there, and a lot happened. I've got a few screenplays like that are still sort of half baked, so Yeah. Um, yeah, lots, lots of stuff.

And in fact, as I'm querying. I'm leaning more on working on those new things while I wait to hear from agents, so that'll [00:03:00] keep me busy. 

Andy: That sounds like a smart idea. Yeah, so I used to work as a cultural anthropologist, and in that previous career I published academic articles and books with trade presses and university presses and so on.

But novel writing is completely different. So when I switched away from all of that, which is six or seven years ago now. I got back into novel writing 'cause in my twenties I was playing around and having fun, having some like bad experiences as well with grad school style critique groups. And then, and I think this is true for a lot of people, when I set up my small business, like, and got into this kind of entrepreneurial world and out of academia, I felt like I was kind of coming back to myself in a way, which is really nice. And I was kind of coming back to things that I was passionate about when I was 10, 12, 14, 15. 'cause I, I [00:04:00] read so much and it was pretty much all spec fic, mostly fantasy, some horror, uh, when I was a teenager and I just started writing a few short stories to start out. Uh, that was incredibly helpful for getting my head around craft stuff. I've got some literary translations. Some of them are published in like journals and things that straddles academia and the fiction world. And then I've got this novel, which is what the Mythcreants team will call a magnum opus. It's an everything novel. It was a first novel I wrote, and I kind of had this experimental approach of, oh, I'm learning how to write. I'm learning fiction craft. I'm also improving my dev editing and my line editing skills while I do it. It's a playground. That was my approach.

There's always just more revisions that need to be made, and I think that is also a potential trap as well. So, how does what I just said fit with your [00:05:00] experience of your magnum opus? 

Karen: Yeah. Um, definitely with you on the magnum opus, 'cause like my magnum opus or my MFA, like I've, I've been working on technically for you could say 10 years or 20 years because it literally came into my head where like the seed was, was planted and sprouted because it was basically Yu-Gi-Oh fanfic. And I like ancient Egyptian mythology. And that has, that has stayed with me the entire time. And with revision it's, I mean, it, it helps that I am trying to get traditionally published because at some point you just gotta say, it's good enough.

It's good enough, it's done. Yeah. And even when, even when you, you query it and you get an agent from it, they're probably going to want to do some revision on it anyway, so there's still some wiggle room and, and that's likely sometimes, uh, because the publishing industry is so cutthroat and because there are way more, way higher expectations for marginalized writers to like be at the top of their [00:06:00] game and to just cut through the competition. There may not be many edits involved. But like always assume that like, yeah, there, there could be like 1% I could do, but for me, I just have to remember that it needs to be good enough and that, and yeah, if you, if you go into an MFA program or put that work on a pedestal or have it be, uh, judged in that way, like most MFA programs, like they, they obviously they want your book to be good.

But like good enough is good enough. And they, at least for my MFA program, it was understood that the real writing that you do happens once when you leave the program. Some, some people are like just amazing and like, you know, meteors and like shooting stars and like all the dominoes just fall into place.

Like they're good. But if it's not an immediate thing and you still need to, to change and revise things, that's not a bad thing either. But when and how to stop revision. I, I would just say [00:07:00] treat it as methodically as you can. Like, look at your structure and, and be like, you know, do I like every word on this page?

Do I like where it ends? Do I like it? Potentially where it goes if you're writing a, a series or a sequel and just be, be kind of methodical about it. 

Andy: Yeah. I think that also links to one of the themes that I've noticed amongst successful writers, and we can define success in a hundred different ways, but it's about keeping going and just carrying on. I know, for example, that you are not going to go from being a complete beginner writer to being at the top of the publishing world and at the top of your game after getting, you know, 1, 2, 3 manuscript critiques or some brief critique feedback. Yeah, you need to be in community and like learning from other people reading a lot and I think of the people who do that, there's maybe two main kinds that I've noticed. One of them is people who are just incredibly persistent and have this incredible focus on this goal. And the other kind are the [00:08:00] people who are a bit more relaxed, but just really, really, really enjoy writing.

So next question. How do you juggle writing with editing slash coaching in your everyday life?

Karen: I feel like it is a very delicate balance that hinges on self-care and mm-hmm. What I mean by that is, I mean, I'm, I've just been doing a lot of self-care work in general because of the impending fascist regime.

Yeah. And the fact that I just need to take care of myself in general. So I've been, I've been exercising, I've been doing Tai Chi, I've meditating and that sort of, that sort of gives me a baseline. I also have to recognize when I have, like I, I have to recognize when I transition to, uh, to new phases in my life.

Like, for some people that have been working on a novel for 10, 20 years or just that, you know, have been entering the query trenches for the first time, it's a weird [00:09:00] place to be because you've gone from working on something and being with that thing for a long time and, and sitting next to it to just like, you know, tossing it out like it's free candy and it's a little jarring and so, you know, blogging about it helps, journaling about it helps and, you know, taking, taking each moment slowly.

So that would be like the first grounding thing that I would say. That I would do to really like, you know, the, the body of the temple, treat it right. And then with editing and coaching and, and writing, I have to be really mindful of my time and I'm mindful of my time in general from just being a neurodivergent person.

I like doing work. I don't like switching back and forth between a bunch of tasks. I try to work in two hour blocks. And that's not because I'm slow at it, like people will think I'm slow at it because of capitalism and like just professional habits, but [00:10:00] that's just, I like just being in one spot and, and rooted and just, you know, having that time to not feel like I, I'm rushing and yeah, I know my limits and my needs, and that has taken some work and that's taken some, uh, some unpacking, uh, because for most of my life I thought I was, uh, I thought it was something else, or I thought I was, you know, neurotypical and, you know, just struggled to do things how they were supposed to be done.

And it's like, no. Mm-hmm. Like I am, I have to, I have to recognize this. Know who I am, what I want, and how best I work. So it's really like juggling writing is like I, what is, what is it? It's not, it's not flying. It's falling with style.

Andy: Yeah. And that brings me onto another theme for surviving in the entrepreneurial space, which I think is about knowing yourself.

Like I know for my editing projects. So in my first couple of [00:11:00] years, I would do lots of small, bitty projects for people and my brain just couldn't hack that. So now I, I pretty much, I, I like a little, the occasional small project for the variety, but I like that deep work. I like working with a novel. I don't like pressing deadlines every day of the week, which some people have.

The freelance world. So I think to survive and thrive, it is important to figure out all of these details about yourself and what works for you. And that's not just individual and personal, like you have to put that in the context of like society and like capitalist demands and all of these things. Yeah.

As well. So, um, the struggle with my writing is prioritizing it in my schedule because it's not paid client work. I really enjoy it. I, I usually do an hour before I start my client work each day. 

And when I do that, I find it invigorates me. I generally feel better on those days, but when [00:12:00] deadlines start to press, then that's the first thing that goes.

It's tricky. It's tricky because you're doing this thing and you just, you are really enjoying it and you're getting a lot of stuff out of it, but you're also like, I'm just doing this solitary thing and I dunno what's gonna happen next with it. 

Karen: Yeah. And I, and I wanna, um, I wanna talk about that.

'cause I, I feel the same way. I, I genuinely, if I don't write, I just feel angry for the rest of the day. Or if I don't Yeah, if I don't do some kind of creative thing or don't fill that cup,  it's a domino effect. Yeah. But I also have to remind myself that life is rarely disorderly as I want it be.

It's okay if there is a deadline and you just have to, you know, work some evenings or, or two to work in the afternoon, or that writing takes a back seat, you can move the bar lower or you can pivot or have like, you know, one type of schedule that's [00:13:00] your ideal day or one type of schedule that's your, it's like Schedule B where it's like, okay, here's, here's some slots for, for editing work that I could do.

I might be doing the same thing. Yeah. When I, um, when I'll be doing that kind of as I. Do my book coaching courses, which, which are run in the, in the mornings where I typically like to write, I might just write in the afternoon instead, or alternate in those days. So being firm is me saying that I want to do some kind of writing at some point during the day, but being flexible, yeah.

Yeah. That, that flexible part is I wanna, I wanna do it at some point during the day, or I want to do something creative in place of that, or I want to do something like, I, I wanna scratch that itch. Like just the other day, uh, I was, I was kind of torn between working on something new, uh, while waiting to hear back from agents or working on the sequel to my, uh, to the novel that I'm querying.

And I was like, you know what? I can write a blog post about this and, and that [00:14:00] counts, that counts as writing.  I'm putting something into existence. I'm creating something. So I've found that being flexible helps and it's not a loss if I don't hit that mark that I've set for myself in that specific way.

Um, and that's taken a lot to, to recognize because I, I like things a certain way. 

Andy: Yeah. Yeah. And I think already having got to that stage of having a full draft that has been revised. That's already testament to incredible drive and discipline because so many writers just don't get to the end of that.

That first discovery draft quite often. 

Karen: Shout out to my accountability buddies email list that, yay, that I, that I emailed each month as I was working on revisions, uh, for my novel. Just, just the fact of having like a huge list of people that I emailed every month saying, Hey, I'm still working on this.

Hey, I am running into these snags, like just to check in. That was a great anchor. That's a great anchor. [00:15:00] 

Andy: Yeah, and I will do a massive shout out to the Mythcreants team and their Discord, because I get so much out of that. I just love, love hanging around there. Um, and I haven't been hanging around there enough recently, but that's 'cause it's the summertime and so on.

Yeah, as, uh, as autumn begins, I will get back in the jive. Okay. So question number three. Does being a writer make you a better coach or editor? Thoughts? Hot takes anything. 

Karen: Hot takes. I say yes. I say yes as well. And yeah, Jenny Nash, the CEO of Author Accelerator disagrees. Ooh, with me. Okay. And I love Jenny Nash.

I'm not, I'm not gonna like, we're not frightening over this, but the argument goes, or the argument that was positive to me as I was getting my certification is, and other students getting their certification, is that you don't need to be a writer in order to be a book coach in the same way that you don't need to have broken your leg in order [00:16:00] to be a doctor and prescribe a cure. And you can study, you can study the craft, you can read the books, you can have that deep knowledge. And I think that's still helpful because being a reader offers a perspective that is absolutely needed.

And if your reader eyes are really, really sharp on your stat block or whatever, like I might gravitate toward a certain kind of writing coach or book coach, or writing coach or editor with a reader's eye more than a writer's eye, because I'm at that stage where I want my writing to be read and not to be crafted, but I still think that being a writer makes you a better coach or editor because, speaking from working with clients and just hearing what they're struggling with, it's so powerful for someone to say, [00:17:00] yeah, I've been where you are. I, I recognize the problem that you are dealing with because I dealt with the same thing, or I'm dealing with these same struggles right along with you.

And sometimes like if you don't have that writerly sense, you aren't able to. Pick up on the holes or the pitfalls that your client might fall into. Like for a reader brain, you can understand like what's working and what isn't working, but if you're a writer, you can understand why something is working or why something isn't working, if that makes any sense.

Andy: It does make sense. Yeah. Just as you, as you were talking, I was also thinking through my own take on all of this, and I like the, was that Jenny Nash's metaphor, like breaking the leg? 

Karen: Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm probably like paraphrasing and misquoting here, but yeah, that, I think that that was my understanding of the argument and I think it's because many people want to be book coaches and [00:18:00] editors and want to help writers, but they think that they can't become book coaches and editors because they aren't writers. Which isn't true. 

Andy: That's not true. Yeah. Yeah. 

Karen: That's not true at all. 

Andy: Yeah. So my metaphor, and this is really for dev editing, is the writer is like a person driving a car and dev editing is like somebody with a clipboard or whatever sitting by them commenting on their driving. And they are two. They are two completely different things. Yeah. And you can be really, you can be a really good backseat driver, but you can be an absolutely awful driver.

That's the thing. 

Karen: That's true. That is true. 

Andy: And I think it's a little bit different with line editing, which is that heavy sentence level stylistic editing. If you are incredibly accomplished at line editing, then on one level you'll be a good writer. But that's kind of the technical level. That doesn't necessarily mean you'd be able to put a novel together, which I think the hardest thing, and this is actually a point that Mythcreants [00:19:00] argue, the hardest thing, is moving from the outline to the implementation.

Even if you have something which looks good on paper from a dev editing perspective. As an outline of a novel, like the implementation is the hardest thing to do. Yeah. Like, yeah. 

Karen: Yeah. I think kind of meshed with that, with all of what we're talking about is maybe imposter syndrome a little bit because Serena Williams, like the greatest female, possibly greatest all time around tennis player of all time. Like had, had probably, or has still has a coach that has not won a whole lot of championships, like this is Serena Williams that we're talking about here. Like Serena Williams needs the coach that she needs, and she needs, she needs to work out specific problems with, whether that's her serve or her mental health or what have you.

And so, mm-hmm. With a developmental editor, which is helpful to [00:20:00] see like how you're driving and how you move through those obstacles and you know, how you're navigating a road, to kind of riff off your metaphor here, your analogy, um, I would say that a, um, a, an an instructor in the passenger seat of the car who has, you know, who's been in that place of being very nervous behind the wheel.

Maybe the car is too old or maybe the car doesn't work and that's holding them back. Or maybe they're just nervous and they can like, talk to them. And I'm, and I'm not saying that like editors are like super unemotional as I'm, as I'm saying that; I feel like I'm implying that, but that's not what I'm implying. I'm just saying that being a writer gives you the edge of like seeing what's going on inside of the mind of the driver or the mind of the writer or the heart of the writer, rather than looking at what's external. You need [00:21:00] both.

Yeah, you absolutely need both. And that's why so many book coaches I think start out as developmental editors and you know, kind of start thinking like, okay, how can we help the writer as well as the writing. 

Andy: Yeah. Yeah. I've been thinking about that a lot in my own coaching and developmental editing practice.

Because there's one end of coaching which overlaps with counseling, and that would be kind of a creativity coaching, coaching writers through things like imposter syndrome, overwhelm, things like that. As a coach, you, it would be unethical to go very deep without having that psychotherapeutic training, et cetera.

 But that's one, that's kind of one end of coaching that I see. And the other end that I see is this kind of story coaching that overlaps with consulting and developmental editing, where you are helping the writer figure out and get their head around all of the different parts of story. And there are all of these different moving parts [00:22:00] and they're kind of difficult to manage; you work on one and that might create a new problem with another part.

And it's a bit like, it can be a bit like whack-a-mole, I think. 

Karen: Well, that's the thing though, like when you're a book coach instead of a developmental editor, you start to, you start to see that problems that are showing up in the manuscript are indicative of problems that are at the writing level or the, the sort of emotional or mental level.

Like if you have a, yeah, if you have a manuscript where you have all these different POVs. You have like, it, you just wanna write everything in it. There's some sort of, there is an emotional reason behind it, of course, or there's an attachment to it. You know, being a book coach, I feel like it gives you the space to talk about those things, uh, in, in a more, in a more in-depth way.

Andy: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of writing is also [00:23:00] psychology or  psychosocial even. That is, I think that is one of the massive benefits of being an editor slash coach who will say, write, going back to that anthropology now. But it's a little bit like fieldwork. You've got all this experience, firsthand experience that you can draw on, and when you can draw on that in an appropriate way, it can be so powerful and invigorating.

Karen: And I will say though, this might be a little bit of my imposter syndrome kicking in, I feel like, um. I feel like as a book coach that works with BIPOC and L-G-B-T-Q writers like mm-hmm. Even me, like even when I choose people that I want to work with, or business entities that I wanna work with, I'm like, the proof is in the pudding.

Like I want, I want receipts, I want testimonials, I want to know that, like you intimately know my struggle and mm-hmm. You know, for some people they might not need to know that as intimately and they just wanna problem solve. They want the kind of external help. Yeah, it's both like me as a [00:24:00] consumer and me as an entrepreneur, I understand that I look at other businesses or book coaches or editors or other entities in the same way that my potential customers might look at me.

Andy: Yeah. There's a distinction there between doing the technical work and the deeper work. If you're part of this massive traditional publishing operation doing dev editing for instance, you often do just write a fairly short report and you might not have that much contact with the author. 

I love this kind of slightly deeper work where you are also working alongside in community with and, uh, rooting for that person, for their success. That is just so incredibly rewarding. 

Karen: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like the, the clients that, that I work with, like, I'm gen, I genuinely want them to succeed. I want us all to succeed. It's not like, you know, mm-hmm. You have to make me look good. It's not, it's not like that. It's not like that at all.

Because you are, I mean, my clients', [00:25:00] my clients' success. Success is my success. They are, they're helping. Mm-hmm. Hold open the door for me and for others. 

Andy: I like that. Yeah. Yeah. And, and success, what it means for everyone is different. And that's beautiful too. For some people that I know, success would be just feeling good and excited about their writing and getting up and writing. And then for other people, it's about trad pub contracts or small publisher contracts or selling, I don't know, thousands of copies if they're self-publishing, that kind of thing. So, yeah. Yeah, which is not bad. It's nice. It's not bad. 

Karen: It's the cherry on top.

It's not the sundae. 

Andy: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I, I think that that's another really important point, and it goes back to enjoying the process. It's about the process is the thing. The product is not the thing. The product is like the nice cherry on top that might happen or might not happen. 

Karen: Yes.

Andy: So 

Karen: it's about the journey, not the destination. 

Andy: I know we're, we know, we're back to that 

Karen: specific cliche. I, I need to [00:26:00] edit it out. 

Andy: No, keep it. Yeah, it, it's true. It would get, yeah, we're back into the quest or let's not speak of the hero's journey, but yeah. But writing a book in a way is a quest, and I think that's why many writers write quests as well, because they can relate to it on a deep, visceral level.

Okay. We're pretty much done here now, but before we finish, Karen, can you tell us a little bit about your coaching program? And I heard there's this amazing scholarship fund called the Captured Phantom fund. 

Karen: Yes, so it is the Captured Phantoms. Pay It Forward scholarship fund. And basically every year I set aside 5% of my earnings, or at least 5% of my earnings from coaching and editing jobs.

And that's put in a fund that helps subsidize the cost for coaching and editorial services that I provide to BIPOC and LGBTQ writers of speculative fiction that I work with. Since that is my specialty, [00:27:00] I was inspired to make the fund due to a fellow editor, Jake Nichols, uh, who created a fund of the same name.

And I also just really want to emphasize that yes, I'm in business for myself. Yes, I'm trying my best in the, in the capitalist regime that we're under. But I am willing to meet you halfway or even all the way if, uh, if you need that assistance at this time. So if you want to apply for a scholarship award to maybe cover some of the costs or all of the costs, just go to, uh, go to karenaparker.com/book-coaching.

I think there's a hyphen in between book and coaching. Maybe put that in the show notes. 

 Or editing. And just click on one of the, the nice-looking orange buttons to send an application for one of my services to work with me. 

Andy: Okay. Um. That is really cool, and I also have a scholarship fund and I will drop details about that also in the show notes.

So thank you folks for listening. Of course, [00:28:00] once again, there's gonna be loads of stuff in the show notes, so you just absolutely have to go there. If you enjoyed this and you want to keep in touch or you have thoughts, hot takes, anything. You can send me an email or you can sign up for my newsletter. And finally, it would really help me out if you've got this far, you've been listening and enjoying it, if you would subscribe to this podcast rate and review it. And that is it. Until next time, thank you very much. 

Karen: Thank you, Andy. Bye bye y'all. Bye.