By: Giselle General

During the Writers Guild of Alberta 2024 conference where I spoke in a panel about memoir writing, I mentioned that a big driving force in my decisions is fairness in compensation. The moderator of the panel seemed to appreciate how much I emphasized paying people properly for their efforts. In an area where people are typically underpaid, if they are paid at all, I vehemently refuse to add to the exploitation of artists.

That was why I really appreciated the advice from my writing mentor Wendy, that I can – and should – apply for grants. It didn’t even occur to me that I can get money to cover expenses I needed, let alone have money to pay myself for the efforts beyond writing the book.

Based on my online search, I concluded that I needed a developmental editor, a line editor, and a copy editor. What they do are related to each other, but are also distinct. This resource (written for a Canadian audience from a Canadian webpage) can help provide clarity on the differences of each. I contacted several editors using both the directory I found online and also contacting a facilitator of a writing workshop that I enjoyed. After getting quotes and plugging in the numbers on the grant applications, I clicked submit. I had earlier success with a smaller grant, but these ones are different, with a complete budget breakdown for each expense. I agonized on how much to add in the subsistence category until I decided to allocate a partial subsistence since I won’t be doing this book project full time. I hoped that my explanation that I contacted three sources for a quote for each editor service was both believable and accurate. I told myself to wait patiently, doing as many self-edits as I can until the professionals take over – if I can can hire them, that is.

To my surprise, my grant applications got approved. The money I asked for is also a pretty decent size, about tens of thousands of dollars. I would have been content to be approved the money I needed to pay myself a partial subsistence (some kind of living allowance for doing this work). But I got exactly what I requested, to the penny. Right after the agreements were signed and the money got deposited, I contacted the first editor right away, worried that after three months that they have other projects and won’t have time to mine anymore.

Thankfully the developmental editor was available, a fellow Filipina-Canadian who is deeply involved in social justice, arts, and literary community in Ontario through an initiative called Living Hyphen, supporting the creative expression of hyphenated Canadians like her and me. When she gave her quote earlier she even offered to give a discounted rate in case finances are an issue, but I placed the full amount in the grant application and now that I got it, I’m ready to pay that full amount. We had to sort out timezone differences for the video calls and sent several emails back and forth to ensure the contract details worked for both of us. We agreed for her to have three months to do the review since she needed to read the whole manuscript to give the big-picture and structural advice that the developmental editor is supposed to do, while tolerating my countless grammatical mistakes.

When I received her very detailed report on what to consider before the next round of edits, I asked her a very vulnerable question: “You know how in our culture, we are supposed to obey the elders and authorities without question? I feel unsure about your report. Am I supposed to obey and follow them all? Am I supposed to do them and send back to you for approval?” I’ll always treasure her kind response to this. “Whatever you decide is up to you. You have the final choice to accept, reject any or all of the recommendations. It’s your story.” Definitely worth every dollar I was able to pay – thank you funding grants!

After a few more discussions where I realized she didn’t understand something major in the story, I knew I had a lot of work to do. While doing all these edits, I contacted the line editor next – the one who would take up the challenging tasks of editing the grammar, line by line. This person is not a Filipino – which I did on purpose because it is important for a native-English-speaker to understand the story and to flag Filipino references that are unclear to her. With how the scheduled ended up falling in place, she had to edit from mid-December until early January. I felt a bit guilty and emphasized that there’s no need to work through this over Christmas break. But she seemed okay with doing it. After all the hundreds of verbal tense edits she did on the almost 90,000-word manuscript, I gleefully e-transferred the payments.

A month after the line edits were completed, I contacted the person I chose as a copy editor, a fellow Filipino-Canadian in the local literary community in early 2024. This is my third professional editor so I kind of know the motions: preliminary meeting and discussion, contracts, payment details, sending a copy of the manuscript, and then waiting patiently. Through him, I saw the clear signs of a professional who cares about outcomes and not just getting paid. He booked a meeting with me to flag his concerns, believing that my manuscript is not ready for copy-editing just yet since there are certain parts of the story that he had trouble understanding. I told him my short-term goals which is to have a manuscript and templates of documents to contact agents and publishers.

So we had to change our scope to help achieve that – to do some line editing and copy editing of the sample chapters I will send, to do another set of line editing on the chapters with sensitive content, and to help me draft the content I will send for applications to get the book published. Think of it as a resume-writing service, but the applicant is me as a writer and the story of the memoir. All these cost a bit more, but with the grant funding I got, I was able to make some adjustments.

Once his edits were completed, the literary conference took place. The organizers did a fantastic job with the panel, as the first panelist had at least two memoirs published and bunch of other books, the second panelist had one memoir published, and there’s me who just finished the professional edits of the manuscript. Maybe I’ll reach the same achievement as the other two, but for the audience it was helpful to listen to writers at different stages.

Given the extra funding I got, the first consultant-based reading service I used was the Manuscript Reading Service of my province’s writing guild here Alberta. As I paid the fees and waited for the manuscript to be reviewed, I took my mind off anxiously waiting by doing other visual artistic projects, mostly upcycling. I particularly liked the pay structure, how reviewer gets most of the payment. The review I received was insightful.

After I went through another round of self-edits, it’s time to do the other professional service I never thought I’ll have the funds for – beta readers. Their role is to read the the manuscript and assess it as a “regular reader”. I did this for a Canadian author a few months ago and it was a pretty cool experience. I admit, I had an “imposter syndrome” moment and wondered if my time and effort reviewing the document, and my insights condensed in a four-page report, were worth the fees given to me. It was a process to re-frame my mindset. Consultants of all sorts are paid for a reason, so I deserved that fee as well.

For my manuscript I ended up having three beta readers, a writer based in the US, then two people from my city, a non-Filipino person I know through my other community service work, and a Filipino person with a education in writing. I sent them the same set of questions about their experienced reading the book and their responses were quite different than I realized. It’s exactly the feedback I needed because my story has very Philippines-based context, that would be published in a country outside of my motherland (if I get lucky), with a diverse audience. Until now, I actually have a lot of decisions to make on whether their opinions will sway me enough to edit certain book chapters. Or perhaps I should wait until an agent or publisher reads the sample chapters and we can work through the rest of the edits together.

I joked a few times that dealing with grants is the worse combination of applying for jobs and doing your taxes, including the need to report what you did with the money at the end of the time period. For the first art funder I submitted my report and it was accepted, which meant that my recordkeeping was organized and they clearly understood where and how I spent their funding for this project. As this year comes to a close, I am preparing my final report to the second funder as well.

It’s still so humbling to think about the financial access I was able to tap into, and because of that, I was able to pay all these professional writing services the amount they asked for. No haggling, not undercutting. This whole experience for the past year and half drives my motivation even more to get this story to the finish line, to its final published form.