Client Interview: Jospeter M. Mbuba, PhD

It's always a privilege to work with academics on their manuscripts.  As a former academic, I know the joy of having a book-length manuscript accepted for publication.  But having the manuscript accepted is just the first step.  Perfecting the manuscript can be the hardest part, especially for academics whose degrees aren't in writing studies.  That's where LSE comes in.  I was fortunate to help Jospeter Mbuba, PhD, by lightly copyediting and proofreading his book Policing in Eastern Africa: A Focus on the National Police Service in Kenya.  Here's what Dr. Mbuba had to say about the book and working with me as a copyeditor and proofreader.

LSE: What’s the title of your book, and when did you first decide to write it?
Mbuba: Policing in Eastern Africa: A Focus on the National Police Service in Kenya.  The project is the culmination of my sabbatical research. I sought to fill a void in comparative and international policing, as there were no comprehensive academic reference materials on policing in Kenya.

LSE: Where is the book currently in the publication process?
Mbuba: The book is currently under consideration for publication. What remains are a few photos to be added and any feedback from the potential publisher.

LSE: What are your hopes for the finished book?  Whom do you hope to reach, and what effect do you hope this book will have on them?
Mbuba: I hope to have the book adopted for teaching in higher education institutions in Kenya and the larger region of Eastern Africa and to have it used as a reference by scholars of comparative and international law enforcement. The effect of this work will be to provide students with a baseline text about policing and to make available comprehensive data for use by scholars.

LSE: You’d mentioned during the editing process that you enjoyed reviewing the first pass of the edits and proofreading markups.  What was it that you found enjoyable?
Mbuba: It was absolutely enjoyable to learn from my own grammatical errors and to see the various effective ways of communicating an idea.

LSE: How did the proofreading/editorial process help improve your manuscript and, perhaps, benefit you as a writer?
Mbuba: The editorial process improved the quality of my work significantly. It evened out awkward sentence turns, put emphasis where it was necessary, introduced active tone where it unnecessarily was passive, changed the focus to the right subjects in sentences, removed ambiguities, introduced clarity as necessary, and provided proper punctuation. Reading through these edits certainly benefited me, as it gave me quite a few insights about how to improve my writing.

LSE: Was LSE fair and accommodating regarding the price and payment arrangements?
Mbuba: The price and payment arrangement were very fair. I couldn’t ask for more.

LSE: What advice would you give to other academic and book-writers who are writing non-fiction books, both about writing their books and about working with a professional copyeditor?
Mbuba: Every writer needs a professional copyeditor. Novices can improve the quality of their work, and experts benefit from a second opinion.

Client Interview: CN's Collected Short Fiction

I had the pleasure of working with CN in the summer and fall of 2015 on a collection of his short fiction.  I was already familiar with his work, so I knew that I should expect a series of challenging, engaging, sometimes mysterious, and often heart-shaking stories.  CN’s objective in working with me was to have an honest, rigorous editorial review of a few of the sections that he had divided his stories into within a larger collection.  We weren’t working on a specific deadline, so we spaced our conversations out over several months.  He’s continuing to work with the stories in the hopes of publishing some of them individually and, eventually, as a full collection in a book.  I sat down with him not long ago in one of our favorite watering holes to review our editorial process and how working with LSE was useful for him.

LSE: I’m so glad to have a chance to talk with you about our somewhat unusual editorial review process and what it was like to work with me as your editor.  You have some truly unusual stories.  How might you describe the genre of your project?

CN: It’s a collection of short stories with what I believe to be distinct themes. 

LSE: Tell me the story of your project.  Let’s start at the beginning.  What led you to this project?

CN: I’ve been writing for a while, but I went through a personal matter that I felt needed to be communicated, specifically to my sons.  My sons are in their twenties now, so the project began when they were young adults.  I knew they were amenable to listening to and reading stories, so I thought the story collection would be a safe way for me to maintain distance while still providing a lesson.  The stories were a means for channeling that information to them so it wouldn’t come across as dad simply lecturing them. 

LSE: At what point in working on the project did you decide that you wanted to consult an editor?

CN: I was already receiving feedback from [a writing group that I coordinate] and other writing groups where I regularly share my stories.  I had never really had in mind to market my stories, but I’d heard enough from other people who said, “Hey, you ought to think about getting these published.”

An editor is more than just another set of eyes.  You were an alien voice, which was useful since I was already getting feedback from familiar sources.  You had insight.  Your expertise is unambiguous.  And I enjoy ambiguity, as you know from working with my stories.  But in a way, I think that’s what my stories needed.  They needed a critical eye that would look not just at the story as a story. 

LSE: Where are you at with the project, currently?  What future plans do you have for it?

CN: There are still things left to be said to my sons, and I’m still looking for ways to say those things.  I think I’ve discovered which particular stories I want to keep working with to improve that communication. 

I’ve written enough stories now that they are showing different thematic connections, which is a positive that I didn’t initially realize.  You helped to reveal that, not so much by pointing out the connections but by prompting me to look for them.  You also helped immensely by encouraging me to think more carefully, closely about the characters and why they’re doing what they’re doing.  When I look back now, I ask myself similar questions about characters in stories you didn’t review. 

Now I’m hoping to develop those particular stories, and I envision developing them into a novel.  But certainly not a traditional novel.  It would have to be something unusual.

LSE: What are your hopes for the project?

CN: To have my sons read it finally.  Well, that’s not really true.  Maybe I’ve already used the word “legacy” as we’ve been talking.  If I haven’t, I should because that’s probably the right word.  And writers say that often enough, so it’s probably pretty trite, but I want the legacy I leave to my sons and other readers to be more permanent than it would be if I were just speaking the stories to them.  Writing goes beyond that.  People read stories to be able to talk about them with other people.  What you do with the story after you read it might have nothing to do with the story itself, but the story is a place to start. 

LSE: What was it that you felt you were struggling with and hoped that having an outside perspective would help you with?

CN: The order of the stories and the thematic sections I was breaking them into.  I write very traditional stories—especially my earlier stories—though now I’m trying to do something different with them.  In spite of the traditional form, I wanted to see if others would notice the more subtle subtexts, which aren’t always about very traditional themes.  I’m ok with it, either way.  I like story for story’s sake.  But I’m interested in those subtexts because that’s where readers get away from the story and start talking about the true magic of life.  So I’m always looking for that, from any reader.  It can be frustrating at times, not because readers didn’t get the subtext but because I couldn’t always strike the balance I wanted between making it clear enough and obscure enough.

LSE: What do you feel more confident about regarding your writing now that you’ve worked with a professional editor?

CN: I’ve always considered myself a risk-taker as a writer, but I’m much more of a risk-taker now because I know there are sharper minds out there that can figure out the hidden complexities of the seeming banalities that I might try to slip into stories.  I like to think that that’s what editors should provide for writers.  I used to have the notion that writers would cower from their editors, but it turns out that it really should be more of a collaborative process.

LSE: What advice do you have for other people who are writing short stories and who might have similar difficulties or concerns?

CN: They should read Infinite Jest, like you and I did last summer.  I suppose that I was fortunate to find an alien voice, so I would tell them to find an outside voice, a different perspective.  Don’t become provincial in your core group of readers or listeners or even friends.  As a writer, I hope to invite other ideas into my limited imagination.

Client Interview: CM's Classics Thesis

CM reached out to me in late spring 2015 for help with her dissertation-turned-Masters-thesis.  She was facing a lot of challenges: a advisor who lives on another continent, a looming deadline, and the demands of her job as a Latin teacher.  We started working on her thesis in May 2015, setting up a schedule for drafts and revisions. CM finished her thesis revisions on time; in three months, she was able to submit revisions to the entire text before she left for a much-deserved vacation in New York!  We sat down together not long ago over a cup of coffee so I could ask her to tell me the story of the thesis.

LSE: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk about your thesis and what it was like to work with me on the revisions. So, what's the story behind your project?

CM: That in itself is something of an epic story.  The basic idea for this thesis came from 20 years ago, when I was working on it as a dissertation at Cornell.  I was getting ready for the dissertation proposal, but I just didn't develop it into the full dissertation for many reasons.  Then I came to Fort Wayne and taught Latin, and I would submit conference proposals based on the chapters I'd been working on for the dissertation, but I just didn't have time to go back to the dissertation while I had a full-time teaching job and kids.  When I finally did get time to go back to it, there were no Classics Ph.D.s online except at UNISA [University of South Africa], but they said, "Hey, yes, you can pick up where you left off with that other dissertation!"  So, I plugged along for a couple of years on it as a doctoral thesis, then because of the rules they have about what counts as a dissertation, I decided to write it up as a Masters thesis because I thought, "Honestly, if I have a Masters, I can be well-positioned and not be over-qualified for any job I might want."

LSE: At what point did you decide you needed to get help from an editor?

CM: When I was facing the revision process this summer.  Thinking about it, I was in a panic.  I didn't feel like I could approach the revisions without someone to support me.  I had a friend who tried to help, but I didn't end up getting very focused advice, and the text was still in a messy state.  I started thinking of whom to ask or or hire to help.  If you hadn't said that you'd be willing to help, I would have looked for someone to hire.  I wasn't crazy about the idea of spending money on the project, but I realized that if I didn't, it probably wasn't going to come together.  I'd found someone on Craigslist and I probably would have gone back to him.  I know you're a person of faith and I am not, but if ever I have felt like there was divine intervention, it was when my friends brought my second husband to my door and when you said, "I'll do this, and it won't cost you as much as you think."

LSE: Ha!  Well, there's at least some order in the universe.  So where is the project?  What else is left to do with it?

CM: I still have to do the bibliography and reconcile the sources.  Other than that, it feels like the rest is done.  I'll get [my advisor's] last round of feedback and do any revisions he asks for.

LSE: Great!  What are your hopes for the project, once it's completed?

CM: Well, I feel really confident about the quality of the writing now, so now I'm expecting that any concerns my advisor might have won't be that ginormous.  The Masters degree matters to me because it means I have something to show for the years and years of graduate school.  And it'll make the job market easier if I want to pursue other teaching positions.

LSE: Let's talk about the editorial process a bit.  What were you struggling with most that having a professional editor's perspective helped with?

CM: I think what I struggled with most was handling the overwhelming amount of work I had to do and understanding how to respond to my advisor's comments.  You helped me look at it more objectively, so I didn't feel like I wanted to cry about your edits and suggested revisions.  Having someone there to coach was great.  I would send you things and you would respond and gave me timely feedback, and that was not my experience with [my advisor].

LSE: What do you feel more confident about after having worked with an academic editor?

CM: The feedback you gave me was so focused that it was easy to respond to correct what you pointed out.  It also made me think about my own comments to my students: "Oh, sometimes I really do say vague things to them!"  Sometimes, I would think, "Wow, that was exactly what I needed [to hear].  Going through the whole process has made me feel like, "Yes, I can do something like this; even if it gets bogged down, I can do this."  It wasn't a writing style that I liked, and I won't be writing in that style again, and finding that out was good, too.

LSE: What advice would you give to other people who are writing theses and dissertations and are facing similar difficulties or concerns?

CM: There's no way to overestimate the amount of time it's going to take. What worked for me this summer was that I became more disciplined about a writing schedule.  I said to myself, "Ok, I am going to get up at 6:30, write for two hours, then have a break, and then go back and write for another two hours.  When we first met at the beginning of the summer, I was worried that even putting in the time wouldn't be enough to meet the deadline.  But now I have to write these recommendation letters and having that discipline is good.  It was great, seeing that the discipline was actually working.

UPDATE: CM reports that her advisor has already given her some preliminary feedback: "I received a short message from [my advisor] saying that he is reading my stuff and...get ready...he is proud of me. I am pleased but slightly freaked out!"  Congratulations, CM!!