When not reading horror, Amanda enjoys reading nonfiction about horrible things happening to good people. One of her favourite reads this year was one such book, The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. This book is about the Dust Bowl and Amanda had this to say about it: “Egan does an amazing job of telling the story of the Dust Bowl and the tragic confluence of seemingly unrelated events leading to overwhelming devastation. The inescapability of something tiny and generally innocuous like dust is scarier than any fiction.”
Read on to get Amanda’s thoughts on her career as both an editor and an author and how she balances the two with her personal life.
Q: Who has been your biggest supporter(s) throughout your writing career? What about your editing career?
A: Almost 20 years ago, I stumbled on a writing forum called East of the Web. The people on there were the most passionate, committed, and opinionated amateur writers I’ve ever known. I immediately jumped in and started arguing with them and trading stories and critiques (and arguments) with them. It was the first writing group I’d ever been a part of where I could trust people would be absolutely brutal while refining your story to excellence. We’re spread all across the globe, and East of the Web closed up long ago, but we’re still cheering each other on. I’d never have taken my own writing seriously without their encouragement.
My husband has been my biggest supporter, hands down, in my editing career. As soon as I mentioned to him that I’d like to pursue editing, he started introducing me as an editor. I actually got my first client that way. He always took my career goals seriously, sometimes even more seriously than I took them myself. When it was time to make the leap and take my editing from a side hustle to full-time work, he was the one to give me that final push.
Q: Where do you draw inspiration from in your work? What about in editing? On days when it’s a slog to get through a project or when you just can’t find the motivation, how do you keep yourself moving forward?
A: I’d like to think everything I write is 100% original, but I have a sneaking suspicion that you could read everything I’ve written and find some shadow of it in the stack of books on my bedside table. I draw inspiration from what scares me. I feel like if it gives me the willies, it will give someone else the willies. I’ve got a notebook full of creepy thoughts just waiting for me to flesh them out and put them on paper.
With editing, I can’t believe how lucky I am that I get to be part of my authors’ creative process. Getting to collaborate with an author and help them take their book from “just ok” to out of this world is so satisfying. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that feeling. But motivation is fickle. Frankly, sometimes all that drives me is a looming deadline. If I’m feeling mopey, I remind myself of how bad I wanted this life and remember that a 9-5 office job is still there if I ever want to go back to it.
Q: Editing is often a thankless job when it comes to the wider fanbase of an author. What does it mean to you to be a professional editor?
A: I’m proud of the work I do. I love helping people and working in the background. The author should get all the recognition – without the worlds they build, there’d be nothing to edit. But it makes me so happy seeing my authors succeed and knowing that I solved some problems and made their writing process just a tiny bit easier.
Q: What does it mean to you to be an author?
A: It’s a great gift to be able to tell someone a story. When I was young, my friends would ask me to make up stories for them about whatever boy band we were into at the time – fanfiction before we were calling it that. But it’s such a treat to be able to imagine something that didn’t happen to someone who doesn’t exist and to put it in someone else’s mind and make them feel the emotions you created. It’s intoxicating.
It also means I get to do whatever I want! I try to take full advantage of that freedom and make my stories as off-the-wall as they want to be. It means that a lot of them aren’t anywhere near fit for publication, but it’s a lot of fun.
Q: What is your writing process like? Do you listen to certain music, snack, make loads of phone notes when inspiration randomly strikes?
A: Well, first I clean my entire house, and reorganize my sock drawer…
Once I defeat the procrastination monster, I sit down with a big bottle of water and get started. The beginning of a story is the hardest for me, so I pretend I’m not writing and that I’m telling the shortened version of my story in front of a campfire. I don’t worry about telling v. showing. I go straight to telling – “So there was this creepy thing living in a ditch. All the people in town knew about it. No one would drive out that way anymore.” Here and there I start filling in details, making little notes like “Go back and talk about what happened with the litter of puppies.” It’s very haphazard – notes here, full paragraphs there, until I have something resembling a real story.
Q: How do you keep yourself focused when undertaking lengthy editing projects?
A: Breaking it up helps. I have a good mix of fiction clients and nonfiction and academic work, which allows me to work on one project until I start to go cross-eyed and then switch to something fresh.
Q: Is there a genre or subgenre that you want to explore as an author that you haven’t yet? Conversely, are there any that you’ll never write?
A: I’d like to explore folk horror. I’ve been reading a lot of it lately, but I haven’t tried my hand at it yet. I can’t imagine ever writing romance, but nothing is impossible!
Q: What has been the hardest part of your career as an author and as an editor so far?
A: As an author, it’s finding and prioritizing the time to write. Between my editing career, my family, and everything else I want out of life, writing often takes a backseat. I just don’t write enough. When I’m writing more, I write better. When I’m writing less frequently, it’s a struggle.
The editing itself is easy. Running a business on my own, with no one to answer to but myself, is very difficult. The freedom of being a freelancer is wonderful, and I’m very thankful for it, but I’m still learning how to balance working hard while still taking care of myself and my family. Before I started freelancing full-time, I left the office at 5:00 sharp and didn’t give my job a second thought. Last week, I was finishing up a beta read while stirring pasta sauce, then working on a story until 3:00 in the morning.
Q: Professional editing can be a hard industry to break into, especially for women. What was your path like when you knew professional editing was the direction you wanted to go?
A: I’d been editing here and there for years. We’d just moved to St. Louis, and I’d taken a new job as a secretary at a university. I loved the job, but I didn’t want to stay in it until retirement. I gave myself a two-year deadline to earn enough to take my business full-time. From there, I basically just made myself obnoxious to anyone and everyone I thought might hire me. instead of two years, it took seven.
In the meantime, I had two children. The cost of childcare and the desire to not spend half of my salary so I could send my children to daycare really turned up the heat. I experienced the utter impossibility that so many other parents experienced during the pandemic, trying to work my job remotely with two small children at home. As the pandemic wore down in 2021, and my office prepared to call us back in to work, I knew it was time to make the jump. It’s been a combination of hard work, lucky breaks, and people giving me a chance when I probably didn’t deserve it.
Q: What do you consider to be your greatest strength and weakness as an author and an editor?
A: As an author, I don’t know what my greatest strength is. Maybe my lack of concern with reality and my willingness to have completely bonkers things happen in my stories? I think my greatest weakness is my lack of preparation. When I have a story in mind, I want to sit down and just bang it out and be done with it. I don’t always take the time I should to outline and revise.
I think my greatest strength as an editor is my absolute passion for the work, especially when it’s fiction. I think I do a great job of collaborating with an author to see their vision for their story and to bring it to life, to brainstorm with them some solutions maybe they weren’t seeing before. My greatest weakness is definitely my go-along-to-get-along personality. I believe it’s important to preserve an author’s voice, but sometimes I think I defer too much to the draft an author has sent me and I could be a little tougher. Editing can be a painful process – it’s never easy to receive criticism, even when you’re paying for it.
Q: Who is on your radar as someone you’d love to work with?
A: I don’t know that I have anyone in particular, but I’d always love to work with more indie horror authors. Horror is my first true love and is the genre where I feel I can do my best work. I wish my entire client base could be horror and speculative fiction. But I know it’s hard for indie authors to pay for good editing. I’m still trying to find that balance with my rates to make editing accessible to everyone while still being able to buy groceries.
Q: At some point in our lives, we’ve all heard the negative comments: “You’re not good enough.” “You’ll never make it.” “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” “You don’t belong.” How do you move forward when faced with negativity?
A: I know I’m not that great. I’m not sure what “making it” even means to me, but I don’t harbor any illusions that I’ll ever be a full-time writer. That frees me a lot from the risk of disappointment. I just enjoy writing, and nothing can take that away from me. I love horror stories so much. They’ve brought me so much joy since I was a child. All I want is to be able to write a few stories that give that joy to someone else.
There’s no critic out there who could possibly be as hard on me as I am on myself. Imposter syndrome is real. It helps me to try to be realistic. “Good enough” is so ethereal, a moving goalpost that you can always hold outside of your own reach. There will always, always be someone better than you. Probably a lot of people. There will always be some goal out of your reach. but you’ve got to find something to fill your time – you may as well spend it doing something you enjoy or that you’re moderately good at. In the meantime, you’ll learn and grow.
Q: What advice would you give to women who are wanting to write, especially if it’s something others might perceive as “outside of the norm”?
A: It’s hard. Horror still seems very much like a boy’s club. I don’t think it’s anything nefarious or intentional, but I think it’s a space where women can have a hard time finding their place. That’s coupled with the weird expectation that all horror writers are depraved serial killers, so any “nice girl” wouldn’t write garbage like that. The best advice I can give is to find your people, the safe people who love what you love, who love creating what you love to create, and who will lift you up. Realize and accept that horror isn’t for everyone, and you aren’t for everyone. Don’t waste your energy trying to make people love what you love.
Q: What about to women who are wanting to get into professional editing? Is there a certain degree or experience level that they should have?
A: I’d highly recommend an established educational program, like the University of Chicago. But if you can’t do that, join a professional organization like the EFA or ACES and take advantage of the courses they offer. Editing involves so much more than finding misspelled words and missing commas. I wasted a lot of years thinking that I could be a good editor just because I read a lot. That said…read a lot!
Check out Amanda’s website for River Run Editing, which also holds her blog and updates on all her book news! She has a story coming out in the Bound in Blood anthology later this year that she’s especially proud of, and you won’t want to miss its release!
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