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Tammy Barley www.shoutlife.com/TammyBarley © 2007 This month's featured editor, Tammy Barley, has an impressive list of personal accomplishments. She's canoed through gator-infested Everglades, turned loose hundreds of baby sea turtles on a beach in Florida, hiked the Grand Canyon twice, ridden on horseback across Arizona, and survived a major earthquake. She's also published two series of devotions and writes Western romance in addition to editing manuscripts for published and aspiring authors in a variety of fiction lengths and genres. Congratulations are in order. Your book On the Wings of the Storm recently took first place in the Inspirational Romance category of the 2006 Golden Rose Contest. What's the book about? We love success stories-they inspire us! I love success stories, too, especially when the long shot comes in. This book, a Western romance, is a story of hardship, courage, and an impossible love. When Jessica Hale's family is murdered, cattleman Jake Bennett takes her to his remote ranch in the Sierra Nevadas to protect her from men who would kill her should they learn she survived. Jessica, however, blames Jake for not saving her family and is determined to get free of him and find the men who took her family's lives. There's only one problem. Her heart is drawn to Jake, who, with the Lord's help, is tempting her to believe in forever. You homeschooled your kids when they were younger. In what ways did the discipline of homeschooling hone your editing skills? Discipline is definitely a beneficial by-product of homeschooling. It takes discipline to keep up with a fast-changing industry, study the latest writing and editing techniques, meet goals and deadlines, and focus on every element of a manuscript. But homeschooling also taught me to give constant affirmation and encouragement; as God says, to build one another up and combat the effects of this tear-you-down world. This is just as important with writers as with children. So aside from providing a solid edit for each client, I affirm and encourage. For the business of editing, what books are essential for you? Every editor's faves: The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition; Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition; and Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King. Other must-haves to stay sharp on fiction-writing techniques: Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass, The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman, Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell, and Getting into Character by Brandilyn Collins. All of these books help an editor make a client's work dazzle. What's your ideal editing space? Ideal? (Rubbing my hands together!) A cabin in a forest with huge windows to see the wildlife. Log walls that smell of pine. A wraparound desk (mine's close; it surrounds on three sides), high-speed Internet (yeah, in the forest), and a stack of great manuscripts to edit. Oh, and a FedEx guy who brings weekly shipments of Entenmann's chocolate-chip cookies. What was the last book you couldn't put down? And what made it so-characters, atmosphere, action, spirituality? Texas Brides, a Western romance by Cathy Marie Hake. She is a master of pacing and tells a good story. Right about the time you think you can take a deep breath, she drops a shark in your shorts. What's the last book you read that made you cringe-from an editing point of view? How would you have fixed it? A recent cringer was a published novel written by an acquaintance in one of my writers' groups. It was full of obvious typos, duplicated words, even one duplicated part of a sentence-mistakes that reflected poorly not just on the book but also on the author. A decent editor would have caught the mistakes and saved the author pre-pub nail-biting and post-pub self-inflicted boot prints to the behind. What are your three biggest literary influences? Though it sounds clichéd, the Bible. Where else can a person find boundless and unconditional love, comfort, peace, strength, courage, miracles, inspiration, success stories, and long shots that come in, all in one place? The second greatest influence (a series rather than a single book): the Trixie Belden (juvenile) mysteries. That is where I fell in love with the written word. The third book was much harder to determine than the first two-we discover what led us to where we are by looking back to where we've been. When I reflect years from now, I suspect a strong influence will have been Renee Baron's book on personalities, What Type Am I? It celebrates each individual's uniqueness, quirks, and depths. It leaves you with a greater understanding of self and throws open doors to appreciation for others. Do you think reading the classics and reading genres other than your own is essential to learning the mechanics of writing and editing? Like in Mark Twain's essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," which shows that seeing the bad can train our eyes to see the good too. Curiosity compels me to see why the greats are great, no matter what their genre. Why is that author's name virtually engraved on the best-seller lists? I grab his or her latest release and a fistful of highlighters and analyze the techniques. I read occasional not-so-greats as well, and learn just as much. Do my characters' hardships come off sounding as sugarcoated as theirs? I believe reading across genres is essential for strong writing. As an editor, the wider range of genres I read, the wider range of clients I will benefit. What was your most rewarding editing job? The finished product that made you sit back and think, Thank You, Lord-I truly helped someone today. A man wrote a self-help book for the secular market with subtle faith elements woven in. God will use that book to nudge people closer to Him. I had a hand in that. That is rewarding. What was your oddest/funniest/most groan-inducing editing job? Groan inducing: same job. I knew it had great potential, but organizationally it started out like a dog's breakfast. A piece of advice I invariably give to writers is to join a critique group because it's essential to your writing growth. Do you agree? I'd say it's essential. A good writing group will: Connect you to people who help, teach, encourage, and inspire Connect you to experts on every writing and publishing topic imaginable Connect you to writing contests and publishing opportunities Open doors to agents and publishers. Who has been your spiritual inspiration in writing and in life? A lady named Iris, my lifelong friend. Never have I known anyone with stronger faith, a more giving heart, or more infectious joy. I guess I wasn't surprised to find glimpses of her in my most colorful characters. What one writer makes you sigh and say, "I'd love to write like that"? If I could engage in a Vulcan mind meld (understood by all Trekkies out there) with any writer, it would be Nora Roberts, minus the bad language. I would have said Dean Koontz, but I suspect I'd never be able to sleep again. Critique groups and fellow writers are important, but so is time alone with ourselves and the Word. What Bible verse is your mainstay? Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I am God." That one's printed in bold letters and taped to my computer monitor.
To read the June 2007 Featured Editor article, click here
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