I received my first book contract in 2000, and shortly after I heard about the Colorado Christian Writer’s Conference in Estes Park. I lived about two and a half hours from there, so I thought this would be a good resource for me to learn where to go from there.
I took Tracey Peterson’s continuing education course, and I quickly discovered my writing and my stories needed a lot more work. I wished I could have taken back my book contract because I realized my story was not up to par and that the publisher I contracted with was known as unscrupulous.
I scheduled a meeting with Tracey as an author even though she was representing a publisher. She answered every one of my questions and told me she and a couple other authors had started an online group called the American Christian Romance Writers. I joined as soon as I got home and was the forty-sixth member.
The group grew and changed to the American Christian Fiction Writers, and they started hosting conferences of their own. Meanwhile, I learned so much from them and attended the conferences and joined their critique groups. Most of what I teach today is what I learned from the ACFW.
At the first conference, I met a lady named Kathy Ide, and we became writing friends. At the third conference, Kathy told me she had started a group for editors called The Christian PEN: Proofreaders and Editors Network and encouraged me to join. Now, editing was not something I had ever considered doing.
But slowly over the course of the year, I discovered how much I enjoyed the critique group. Not for what they were able to teach me, but for what I was able to do to help my crit mates.
At the following conference, Kathy again talked to me about The Christian PEN, and this time I listened. I finally got up enough nerve to tell my hubby that I wanted to change from writing to editing. He’s always encouraged me to go for my dreams.
So, I quit the critique group and joined The PEN. I took every course they offered at that time, and after more than a year of studying, I started an editing website and got my first editing client. Amazingly, within six months, I was making more on editing than I was at my day job as Assistant Manager of a prestigious B & B in Breckenridge, CO.
I kept true to my fiction roots, and soon realized that many PEN members editing fiction didn’t understand some of the basic techniques that make fiction unique from nonfiction, so I proposed a PEN course on editing fiction. Within two years, this had grown to four different fiction editing classes per year, which I continued to teach until the PEN Institute was formed. By then, I needed to back off due to health concerns.
But I still love to teach fiction techniques, and my husband has given me a gift of upgrading my website and rebranding my business. I’m looking forward to passing on all that I’ve learned over the past twenty-two years to both authors and editors.
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” ~Ernest Hemingway
