191: July 2025 Q&A

 

Welcome to the July Q&A episode! Topics discussed include:

  • how I balanced writing with being a first time mom 2:46

  • using AI for research 10:01

  • handling form rejections when querying 14:34

  • average prices for developmental editing 18:49

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JUly Q&A

Hi, friends, welcome to our July Q & A episode of the podcast the last Tuesday of the month is a Q&A episode. Y'all can submit questions about writing, editing, my business mindset, querying anything personal, and I will answer those questions on the last Tuesday. If you'd like to submit a question for next month, you can do so at the link in the show notes, and it's anonymous. You don't have to submit your name with the question. We have five questions to get through this month. There's gonna, I just have to say, really quickly, there's gonna be no video for this. I just feel I'm just like having one of those days about to start my period. I'm so tired. I'm so exhausted also because I pushed myself at the gym this morning, and I regret it. I've been doing this new strength training, like workout app, and it's great. It's awesome. But I my entire body feels like jello, and I just like, I don't know I'm on. I'm sitting on the couch right now at home recording this episode, and I like, cannot muster up the energy to put on an appropriate shirt and record myself on video right now, I just can't do it, so we're working, you know, we're rolling with it. We're just doing the audio only for this episode. We'll be back next week with the video.

 

Yeah, I've been strength training for a while now, just like doing weights at the gym and stuff, and I like to follow an app because I know various exercises, like for upper body and lower body, because I've been doing this for a little while, but I just don't know the best rotation of exercises and push versus pull. There's just a lot I don't really understand and don't care to learn honestly. So I'm trying this new app. I'm on the I'm like, on a week trial. I'll talk about it later, if I down the road, if I like it, but I want to test it out and see. So, yeah, I'm just like jello, though, my entire body. Anyways, enough about that. Let's get into our questions.

 

Question number one, how did you balance being a writer and a first time mom? I love this question, and I will answer it so honestly and say that I did not in postpartum. I knew going in to giving birth, becoming a mom postpartum, that I was probably not going to write. I kind of set that expectation for myself because I had heard just how insane postpartum was for a lot of people, and I wanted to be kind to myself and just be like, Okay, let me, let me level set and just go ahead and set this expectation that I'm not going to try to write like at all during at least the first three months, just to give myself time to adjust. And I went into it thinking, if I want to write, if I feel inspired, of course I will do it. It might be kind of nice to have that for myself, but I'm not going to do it. And then what ended up happening is I did no writing at all for, I think, longer than three months. I just didn't want to my brain felt tired. It was a lot. Postpartum was difficult for me. I had some postpartum anxiety. I was recovering from a C section, so it was a lot. And it wasn't until, like, around four months postpartum, I feel like I got more into a groove. I started feeling, I mean, physically, I was feeling better, but like, mentally and emotionally, I started feeling a lot better. I was going back to work. I was taking on clients again after a short maternity leave, so it felt a lot better. And I was able to think about, like, kind of pick my head up and look around more and think about writing. So that's what I would say to anyone who is thinking about this, how to balance these things, is like just giving yourself permission and compassion about this whole process, because and because it was my first time going through all of that.

 

I feel like that was another layer of why it was so challenging. Like I just didn't know what to expect. I didn't know how how I would feel. And I could also see, you know that there is you're so focused on your baby in the first few months, like you are just so honed in on this baby, right? And I could see how, first. Writers, like, maybe it would be beneficial to have to still be writing during that time and to just carve out that time as something that where they can, like, do something for themselves. But that just wasn't how it worked with me. So anyways, what I will say she got into daycare right before she turned six months. So we had a couple of months where we were trying to balance working, and my mother in law came over one to two days a week and watched her while Sam and I worked, and we were trying to navigate all that, and it was really difficult, and I don't think I was really doing any writing in that period either. Once she got into daycare, things got a lot better. I felt like I had more brain space and I was able to look at things like writing and feel more ready for those so, yeah, I think just going into it with an expectation of like, maybe you just will not write for a number of months, and that is okay. You will come back to it. You will rediscover that part of yourself.

 

And I never had any sense during those postpartum months that I was just not going to come back to writing, it didn't even occur to me at the time. I think it was just about giving myself that time and that space and grace to figure things out, get more healthy and balanced emotionally, and then I could have the energy to devote to writing. I think the other thing that's important is thinking of quick writing sprints and like changing how you do it. I mean, the way that I wrote my most recent book is through dictating, and I did a lot of that in the car, on the way to daycare or on the way, like to get her from daycare and bring her home, because it's kind of a long commute, and I had that time in the car anyway. So I think that's another thing. Is just like when you're a parent, especially if it's your first kid, being creative with how you're writing and when you're writing, can help you fit it in in a way that feels easier than like, Oh, I've gotta carve out an hour and a half every single day before I start work to write. Okay, I'm gonna say one last thing on this, because I think it's really important in those first couple of months, sleep is the priority. Like, I could have gotten up 45 minutes before I did to write, but I chose sleep because I was getting up and breastfeeding my daughter at night and like, I just needed sleep. Sleep was more important than me finding that time to write in those first few months. So just sleep was the priority.

 

Okay. Next question, hello. Regarding children's books, I have a couple of big words in my story, such as, instinctively and accordingly, what would be the lowest age levels I could target using some big words like these. In other words, what age category would be the most appropriate? Does using a couple of big words matter? Thanks for your professional perspective. Well, I'm giving you my personal opinion, but I can't give you a professional opinion because I don't work with children's books. I'm sorry to say I work with young adults and adult fiction. I don't do middle grade I don't do children's books. I just don't feel like I have enough knowledge to edit those kinds of books or to do any sort of manuscript evaluation or like developmental edit. I can copy edit for authors writing in those genre in those age groups, but that's it, which is just like fixing grammar and verb tense and all that good stuff. So I, unfortunately, am not the right person to ask about this, my personal opinion, though, I'll just share briefly, because you asked, even though I can't answer this in a professional capacity. I mean, it's gonna, it's gonna depend, you know, you mentioned age levels, like, what's the lowest age level I could target? Well, I wouldn't base your age that you're targeting this like, I wouldn't make the decision of what age you want to target based on these words alone, because there's going to be a big difference in you writing a board book for three year olds versus a, you know, 20,000 word book for a 10 year old, like there's just a difference in those things, and maybe not even that extreme, maybe there's just a difference between a book for a seven year old and a book for a 10 year old.

 

Even in those few years, there's so much development that happens. And I will say, I don't know. I'm of the opinion when I think about my own experience as a reader and even looking at I mean, obviously my daughter is not even two yet, so it's not like we're it's not like she's reading yet. But I always appreciated as a kid when adults didn't dumb down their books too much. I mean, obviously having a super elevated vocabulary is not going to be appropriate in a book for like, a six year old, but I don't know. I mean, I don't think it's like, oh, because I'm writing for a seven year old, I can't have any hard words in here. I don't know. I don't think that's always the case, but that's just my personal opinion. I don't know. I'm kind of talking out of my ass here. So yeah, unfortunately, I can't share much more than that. Um.

 

Okay, next question, I know you're against AI in writing, but what about research? I don't have chat. GPT write anything, but I use it for researching stuff, for my world history, etc, and organizing my thoughts. I have shared on the podcast and on social media all of the reasons why I make very, very, very against generative AI for writers, and not just for writing, but any part of the writing process, editing, brainstorming, whatever. And I include research. For me, research falls under that umbrella because, because, here's why it has been shown. It has been proven that chat GPT, like literally hallucinates answers. It makes up things. Or I've even seen examples where it asks, like someone will ask chat GPT something related to spelling or grammar, and it will provide an answer that is just flat out wrong. And the amount of conviction that chat GPT, GPT has about this incorrect thing is astonishing. And the you can push back and push back and challenge them, and they won't budge their answer. So for me, the idea that an author is using something unreliable like chatgpt for research, feels wild. I'll just say I don't understand that if you were doing research. Let's just pull out an example here. Let's say you're writing. Let's say that you're writing historical fiction, or maybe not even historical fiction, necessarily, like that genre, but you're, you're there's some historical thing that you need to research for your novel.

 

Let's just say, the idea that you that someone would go to chat GPT type in a question about something and then just accept that answer as fact and then put it in their novel, makes me want to scream a little bit. I would really encourage you to not do this. It is not much more work to at least go to Google and see where the information that Google's the sources, like the search results, where those are coming from. I know that when you Google something, there's that AI summary up top, I'm not talking about that. Disregard that if you Google something about a time period, or you want to check a year, you want to check a fact, whatever, look at the results that pop up on Google, pick one that's reputable and just confirm. The other thing about chat GPT, that drives me crazy is you don't know where this information is coming from?It could be coming from a blog post by user 67421, who, like, makes up some alternate history thing and then chat GPT has scraped that blog and is like, Oh, this must be accurate, and it's not. Not all sources are created equal.

 

So I would encourage you to not blindly use chat GPT for research, but to confirm the things that you are researching through some other means. It the difference of you putting something into chat GPT, like, if you want to know a year, let's say, what year something happened in, versus you going to Google and then looking at a reputable source to confirm it. It doesn't take that much longer. It's not like I'm asking you to look at a primary source or like go to a library and comb through documents and newspaper archives. I'm not no. I would just be very wary. I don't think you should use chat GPT at all for any sort of component of the writing process, and I include research in that. So that is my two cents on it. Since you asked and organizing your thoughts, I'm not sure what that means exactly. I don't know how chatgpt would help you organize your thoughts in a way that's different than what other writing tools could do. Also, you're feeding your IP into chatgpt by doing that, and I'm not comfortable with that. Personally, I don't think writers should be comfortable with that. Just across the board.

 

If you're interested in more on my stance on AI, you can check out. I have an episode going into all of my reasons about why I'm against generative AI in the creative process. And it's not just like, oh, I don't personally like it. I have a lot of reasons. So fourth question, how do you handle foreign rejections from agents? It's so frustrating to not know why I'm being rejected without any feedback. First of all, I just want to validate this experience, because it sucks. I get it. I've been there. It's hard, it's hard to get the form rejections where it's just like so what this means? If you haven't queried or you're not familiar with this process. A lot of times, agents just get so many queries that they cannot keep up with all of them and write personalized responses to people who query them so they will just have a form rejection. It's like a template, and the language is always pretty vague. It's like, thank you so much for your querying, for querying me. I don't know it doesn't alignwith my interests. I'm going to have to pass at this time. Best of luck to you with your novel. Sincerely. So, and so I'm just making that up. But so it's a template. It feels very impersonal. There's no actual bit of feedback. There's no information on why they decided to pass to reject your query. It can be frustrating, but again, the reason, I think what helps, is just to understand the reason, the reasoning of this, to kind of manage your expectations. Very, very occasionally, you will get a little bit of feedback from an agent.

 

I mean, no agent is going to take the time to do a detailed edit letter for you or anything like that, unless they're potentially interested in working with you, because it's just too much work to do that. They've got to balance their current clients that they have, and then also they get hundreds of queries every single week. I mean, just think for a second what that would be like to have that that many coming into your inbox, or your query management system at all times like it's, it's a it's a lot. So understanding the reason why they do it, I think helps. And I think another thing to weigh is the number of rejections that you're getting, because if you are getting full requests or partial requests from agents, but you're also getting some form rejections that's not bad, like there's just that's just kind of standard for querying getting those form rejections. But if you sent 100 queries and you've gotten 100 form rejections and no partial requests or no full requests, then even though you haven't gotten any actual feedback from agents to meet, that's a very clear sign that something's not working, either in your query letter with how you're pitching Your book or the manuscript itself, something's not working. So yes, it can be frustrating to not have that feedback, but it also comes down to the numbers.

 

So if you haven't sent out very many queries, keep going. I know it's discouraging, I know it's hard, but you just got to have that resilience and keep going. But if it has been a lot of queries and you haven't gotten any requests at all, then it might be time to take a step back and evaluate to see if there's something you want to change. Maybe it means revising how you're pitching your book, making sure that the agents you're querying are good fits. I mean, that's another thing to look at, because if you're querying agents who aren't good fits for your book, or don't accept your genre, or like there's something obvious with your query, like your book isn't even done, then, of course, they're going to reject it. In that case, there are easy things that you can change right making sure that you're querying agents who will be good fits, that they accept your genre, that they're open to queries, that your book is done, like all those basic kind of check marks, the things you could check off.

 

But it might be, yeah. So it might be changing something with your pitch, or getting another set of eyes on your sample chapter to see what the opening of your manuscript is, maybe hiring an editor, if that's something you can do, just putting it down for a while and then coming back to it to see it with fresh eyes. So yeah, that I would look at the numbers. But also I just want to say, I know, I know. It sucks. All right, we have one more question. Can you talk about prices as an editor, it seems like there's a huge range of costs, which is, what should you expect to pay for a developmental edit? I'm in the beginning stages of writing, but want to think about this for the future. Definitely, can talk about prices and have some transparency around this. So there is a huge range for editing, and part of the reason for this is due to experience. If you're a newer editor, and you have three months of experience and you're doing this as a side hustle, then you're going to have a different pricing structure, probably than someone who's been doing this for three decades. So there's that that goes into it, just like any other service or person that you would hire experience. If you have more experience, generally speaking, you charge more.

 

But for average rates of editing, I recommend checking out the editorial freelancers Association. They have a rates page. It's the dash EFA. Bula, the dash efa.org/rates. Or you can just Google Editorial Freelancers Association, I can't talk and rates, so they did a survey of the people in the organization. Fiction in like, end of 2023 beginning of 2024 and 1000 people answered, and they compiled all this data to see, like, what the median rate was for different types of editing. And it's a really in depth rate sheet. They've even got, like, consulting, design, editing in academic fields versus fiction. But just to give you an idea for developmental editing, which quick reminder, developmental editing for fiction is the editors giving you feedback and suggestions on things like plot, characters, pacing, conflict, dialog, role building, etc.

 

So making suggestions for improvement on those things, they're not actually going into like correct things or write stuff for you. They're just helping you see the things that you can't see and giving you suggestions on how to make the book better.Developmental editing, the median rate is three to four cents per word, and then a manuscript evaluation, which is what I offer. It's kind of like a lighter, slightly less intense version of a developmental edit. That is, the median rate is 1.5 cents per word, so you can just calculate based on whatever your word count is, what that would work out too. That's the median rate out of all the people they surveyed, all the editors they surveyed. Now if there are, of course, people who actually, let me just do a quick calculation right now of what that would be. Okay, so let's say you have an 80,000 word novel, and three cents per word would be $2,400 and then the manuscript evaluation, 80 would be 12. Oh, duh, half of that, of course. So it'd be 1200 for the manuscript evaluation and 2400 for the developmental edit, the full developmental edit, that's like the median.

 

Actually, it's a lower end, because it did say three to four cents for developmental edit, but so that's kind of what you can expect to pay. Now there are, of course, people who are charging a fraction of that, and there are people who are charging four times that amount for developmental editing. And if you are looking for an editor to hire for your book, or you're just kind of gathering some data, looking at who you might want to work with down the road, if you find that their pricing is way outside of that, either much lower or much higher. I want you to be cautious, and I want you to go into any sort of interaction with that editor and ask why. Essentially, like, find out, see if you can find out why they're charging so little, or why they're charging so much. Like, if someone is charging $100 for a full developmental edit that takes dozens and dozens of hours for them to complete, but yet they're only charging $100 to me, that's not like a red flag, because sometimes when editors are brand brand new, they will offer discounts in order to help them build up their clients that their and their experience and their testimonials. So that might be the case. That might be the explanation for why that editor is not charging much at all. When I started on Fiverr, which is a freelancing site, I made like next to nothing, it was it was comical at 1.1 manuscript, it worked out to like $1 an hour or something. It was terrible.

 

But that could be it. But if, if if that's the case, ask yourself if that is someone that you want to work with, who's that they you think they could really help you in your book. And if that's not the case, that they're new and looking to gain experience, you want to ask yourself, why? And the same thing is true. If someone is charging 10 cents a word for a developmental edit, or 20 cents a word even. Why? What? Why is that so expensive? What else are they including? What is their process? What are they using to base that number off of and like, I don't know, just go into it cautiously so that you don't get taken advantage of, because I don't want anyone here to get scammed by someone who's charging way more than they should be charging, and promising things that they just can't deliver on. So I hope I'm not too harsh. I don't want to speak poorly of new editors who are charging low rates, but I do just think it's worth examining, like, why they're charging so little, if there's a reason for it, and making sure that they're reputable and that they like, know what they're doing.

 

They're not just like some person who has no experience, and they're like, claiming to be an editor because they like to read or something, you know, which is great that might they might just be a beta reader in that case, and not actually someone who could put together a developmental edit for you, because, again, if it takes dozens of hours for them to complete, and yeah, they're only charging that much I don't know. So yeah, that's some some transparency and information on pricing.And yeah, I think it's I, I'm like talking about this from the writer side to help writers know what to expect. But I also I know that I have a couple of editors. I I'm saying a couple. I actually have no idea how many editors listen to the podcast, or people who are hoping to be freelance editors, but I know some are, because I get DMS, and I just want to say like, you deserve to be paid a living wage for the work that you do. That doesn't mean overcharging and getting massively wealthy, because, let's be honest, that's impossible as a book editor, but, um, I don't know it's it's similar to anyone who works in publishing or works with writers. You hear this attitude sometimes, of like, well, you should just do it because you love books and you love helping writers, which all that is true, but also you deserve to be paid fairly for your work.

 

So anyways, and you deserve to be and not only because you need it to live like a living wage, but also you don't want to have to take on 15 manuscripts a week and kill yourself in order to actually make a sustainable like income off of this that's not possible to do, and then you're spreading yourself too thin, and you're not doing your best work for your clients, and your clients deserve more than that. So okay, rant over. I'll get off my soapbox. But yeah, if you want to look at the editorial freelancers Association sheet, you can and you're curious about like, a different type of editing, you can go check that out and see and of course, editors, most editors that I know of, offer payment plans, and, you know, are willing to kind of work with clients to to help it be more affordable, because it is a lot of money. But, yeah, okay, those are all the questions for this month. Again, if you have a question you would like me to answer, you can submit it at the link in the link in the show notes, and I'll answer it in the August episode. Thank you to everyone who submitted this month. Hope this was helpful, and I'll see you all next week.

Katie Wolf