J. Michael Jones

If you have ever worked with a professional editor, you know the process can be brutal and cuts to the heart of you. I have mentioned before that even John Updike (a fantastic writer and one of only four of which to win the Pulitzer Prize more than once) described in his last book Endpoint, how his editor dissects and changes every single sentence he has written. He had a love-hate relationship with them.

My editor is my friend. Not literally as I only know him professionally, but figuratively. He is a book editor for McGraw-Hill publishing and we contract him on projects at Mount Erie Press. He is my friend because he is an independent expert that tells me how to make things better. I am deeply committed to making Ristretto Rain the very best it could be. Today, the editor said the following: First, the story is definitely worthwhile. It has a nice feel in its simplicity and atmosphere and will be easy to digest once a few storytelling fundamentals are addressed.

The fundamentals he is eluding to relate to my Achilles heel in writing, being too wordy. I am a writing hypocrite as I love to write long exposés but don’t like to read them. It is painful for me to cut material, which I thought was brilliant. But extraneous material can distract from the flow of a simple story.

While I have taken creative writing courses in college, I have signed up for a new one and I’m in the middle of it now. Writing means so much to me, one of the last interest things that brings me great pleasure. While I’ve never had the dream of earning a living from it, I do hope to reach a level of writing that will hold readers’ interest. So the work continues to improve.

My new target date of having Ristretto Rain on the market will be July, after this major rewrite. It will be a good novel and I am committed to making sure that the reader will not be disappointed.

Mike, the Lake Hermit