Beyond the Paragraph: Teaching Writing in Middle School with Structure

What Publishing Taught Me About Teaching Writing Ep. 7

Robin Mellom Episode 7

When I became a published author, I thought I understood revision...until I met my editor. And then my second editor. And my third.

In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on what really happens in the publishing world, all the way from developmental edits to line edits to the final proofread. This changed everything about the way I teach writing. 

You'll hear how authors revise in stages, why feedback is always focused (and never rushed), and how we can bring that same layered process into the classroom.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by student drafts and unsure when or how to give feedback, this episode will give you a fresh structure. Enjoy!

Robin

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Ep. 7 What Publishing Taught Me About Teaching Writing in Middle School - 
Transcript:
(00:01) Today let's pull back the curtain on the publishing industry and i'm going to tell you a little bit about my experience when i got my books published and at the end of the episode i'm going to answer a question that was left for me on a previous podcast and it was about tisha the eighth grade teacher who is implementing the writer's workshop in her classes that are 47 minutes long the question was about how to fit in that workshop along with reading novels so at the end i will address that and if you
(00:39) have a question or comment make sure you hit the link at the end of the description or email me and i'll be sure to answer it in a follow-up podcast so once i started like getting my books published i i everything changed as far as going from a writer into a published author was like going into a new world it was like dorothy and the wizard of oz like i was in the black and white world for a long time meaning that i was on my own for years and i was seriously trying to get published for almost 10 years i had gone to every conference i could go
(01:16) to i had critique groups i wrote novel after novel after novel it was actually my fourth novel that i wrote was the one that got published so then once i got into the door right i got my first contract with disney for a teen book and all of a sudden you're like you're like on this conveyor belt like in willy wonka or something where you're like boop oh my goodness and you're going around and around and there's all these different levels and layers and deadlines and things to keep up with and i was just like what is
(01:52) going on and and at the same time it was super exciting to see what really happens in the publishing world one thing i didn't realize was that i was going to end up with more than one editor on a book so there was the the acquiring editor who found it and purchased it on behalf of the company and he was the one who really got the whole thing up and off the ground with the first round of revisions but then there were other editors who would come along there was more developmental e editor like his assistant then there were line editors
(02:28) copy editors and then proofreaders and every single one of them had a different job and they each gave me feedback in different ways and it was humbling truly cuz i had a lot to learn but it was also really freeing cuz it felt really good to know that they had my back and that this was going to be super polished and we were all going to be happy with it but by having several editors like that it meant that we weren't going to do everything all at once it all has a rhythm and it all has a you know like rounds you go through rounds with the
(03:02) book to shape it and that whole experience changed me and i brought that back with me into the classroom so i'm going to tell you a little bit about what that process looks like the first round we do is called developmental editing or it's it's revision in the big sense of the word where re means to do over and vision means to see it differently so we just kind of envision is there something different we could do with this whole story and it's the first stage it's big picture ideas and the my editor would send me what's called an
(03:37) editorial letter and they weren't just a page they were often many many pages sometimes seven pages sometimes 12 pages and they were single spaced and it would talk about like the the letters themselves were beautifully written because it it starts out with all the things that are working in this manuscript all the reasons why he was drawn to it all the reasons why he decided to buy it all the reasons why he's decided to spend so many hours with this one book reading it over and over and over again so that's kind of part of
(04:14) the reason why it's hard to get published because you have to find an editor who is so excited about your words that they will just become obsessed about it to get it up and off the ground they have to have that much passion to kind of get through the process because it is daunting and so that letter starts out with all those reasons what he loves what what is happening here and it makes you feel so amazing it's just it's beautiful and then the suggestions on things to change are also so beautifully written it's not like this isn't working why did
(04:49) you do that i can't i don't understand that it was like perhaps you should consider there are parts in it you know blah blah blah it's it's maybe someday i'll do a video where i show part of my editorial letter let me know if you guys want me to do that and it's done in such a way that it it gets the point across but it also never really hurt my feelings however i will say that by the end of my revision letter my first one in particular i was just a puddle of tears and i usually am a puddle of tears after that first revision letter because
(05:24) you've spent so many years working on this book and all of a sudden it's it's not just it's like well that character doesn't you know isn't working why don't we redo this to where the family is more like this or something which is such a big rewrite and that i was new to the world of rewriting and i was just not sure that i would be able to do this under a deadline it had taken me years years to get the first novel written and now you want me to rewrite it and turn it in in five weeks and you're just like a puddle you're like there's no way but
(06:03) then they laugh because they're like oh it's okay get started they know that all firsttime authors go through that feeling of like that's that's not possible thank you for asking but no can't do that but in the end we usually almost always are able to hit the deadline but that's not without you know 14-hour days writing staying up till 2:00 sometimes like it's a it is a crazy process but it you get it done so then he's not making comments on things that things that are like nitpicky things he's he's not line editing it
(06:42) he's not changing he's not fixing anything he's just telling me what does he what does he notice and then once i've made all those changes and and we get the okay to move on to the next next round eventually we make it down to another department at the publishing company where the line editor kind of steps in and line editors focus on like at the sentence level how does this um this sentence flow this word choice this voice doesn't seem to match up with this voice there's a little redundancy here the tone seems off a little bit maybe
(07:15) and it'll there'll be comments on the side that says like consider tightening this area or choose a different verb or something or could this transition be smoother stuff like that where it's it there's still some creativity with how you can reword the sentences they're just kind of pointing out areas where you need to rethink and that's kind of a fun section cuz it's you're just one at a time like really at a sentence by sentence level trying to figure out what's going to make this the strongest sentence and it's it's like a
(07:51) puzzle it's kind of cool i don't take offense to it i crave it i love it because it's it's making my own writing sharper it's informing me for my next piece of writing and that's something i want you to kind of keep in mind when you're doing your own writing program in your classroom is that having this amount of feedback along the way is what made me a better writer not the reviews from publishers weekly at the end that that did nothing for me so once we get through the line edits we move into copy editing excuse me copy editing
(08:28) um and this is technical this is where you're getting the word document again back with all these different colorcoded marks and sometimes there are two or three copy editors who have hopped into your manuscript to say some things and it's very it's unbelievable the number of like little tiny punctuation things that they have to fix spelling consistency in my last novel that i wrote for mifflin it's called confessions from the principles kid before we got into this section of copy editing my original editor wrote up a uh i think it's called
(09:06) a stylesheet or i can't remember what it was called but basically it was like this list this master list of things that we needed to keep consistent like the way that we capitalize um aunt joan's name or something or who is in the family like it's all these things where it's it's marked out so you know who the family members are who the friends are what their names are how to punctuate their names sometimes we use a dash with this sometimes not so there's like this consistency document that's made and it's only it's based on me it's
(09:40) based on my writing and what i did so that my story stays consistent throughout because sometimes you you capitalize things weirdly right for effect and they need to know that and not question all the weird capitalizations that i put in my writing and so then we kind of get to move on to that proofreading part and we end up with something called first pass pages which is super fun because now you finally get to see your book formatted the way it will look when it gets printed and there sometimes it's i've done it both ways where i had it
(10:19) literally mailed to me in a big envelope and you have to go through it and write your own marks and remarks back to it and mail it back to them but then i've also done it digitally so that we just write comments back and forth but it's a lot of you know little typos formatting oh there's an extra space here and all of that so we focus on revising a book in segments and there's feedback all along the way so it's layered feedback we don't start with oh this is a great topic you know your first sentence doesn't quite make s like no and i want
(10:58) you to keep that in mind when you are running your own writing program and just to recap basically you have your first round of revisions which is seeing the story differently then you have line edits which is at the sentence level copy edits which is at the grammar punctuation consistency level and proofreading which is final polishing for typos or missing commas or spacing and so keep this in mind when you are teaching that you could do the same exact thing where you are giving your kids feedback all along the way so they
(11:35) don't get too far down this track where they've gone off the rails and you're like "oh boy you got to start over again." so i always do what's called pit stops or we do um checkpoints and they have to pass this checkpoint and get the point you know they literally get a point i give them points for each of the checkpoints as they go along so they gather points on their whatever they're writing so they would um have like if they're doing an essay they'll get points for the research articles that they found and picking a topic and
(12:08) presenting it and get you got you got the okay for that you got you have to be confirmed that yes just like the p the book publishers they you know you don't just start writing the next book i get feedback from them on what the next book should be and i tweak it and back and forth until we get um the topic and possibly even a title already nailed down before i start writing it so then they move on to their next checkpoint which might be like um their introduction paragraph and or their thesis and definitely their
(12:44) thesis is something i would have them have to get checkpoint points for um yeah because it sets up the rest of their essay and then as they start writing right so now they're moving into it and you're really kind of letting them go because they they seem to have the structure of it and then check in with them while they're writing everybody's off and running they're doing this next body paragraph and now you can go in and if you're doing it digitally i like to do mine the drafting in class kick because i can see
(13:16) everybody at the same time and i can put on digital stickers that say something or i can just see what they're doing and send them a little message hey consider this all that all that kind of stuff so if you just keep in mind that the most feedback they're going to get on their writing from you is before they ever turn it in and then that way they're actually going to be able to apply it to the next essay and once they get like into their first or second you know once they get really down there and they have a draft a lot of them will say
(13:51) "i'm done my draft is done." and i will tell them that i i use something called a yellow box method which i found on the internet somewhere and i cannot find the source of it so if anyone knows who came up with this please thank them but um basically you say okay i am going to give you a line edit and like basically a copy edit of one chunk of your essay like one big paragraph and you the student need to pick which paragraph you want me to line edit and copy edit and i i kind of tell them like you should pick
(14:31) one that you're a little unsure of that you're like i am not quite sure if i'm doing this correctly put a yellow box around it and they submit those or they raise their hand in class kick and then i come in and i will do a line edit and i will put comments and i will say you know you're putting your commas before the the quotation marks um there or you need to move them from the outside of the quotation marks to the inside of the quotation marks stuff like that so it's like really small nitpicky stuff that i
(15:01) say and i'll put a comment on there that says global which i learned from my editor and global means that you need to now go back into the rest of your manuscript and fix this because for this round you need to be the one who goes in to find this so they are in that pit stop then where they're getting feedback from me on the on a really you know nitpicky level there of sentences and punctuation and all that and then once they get into the revision part i have them i mean it's it's good to have them have time away from their writing if
(15:36) possible which is honestly never possible that was the one thing i always did is i would put it in the drawer so to speak and then not look at it for like at least a week and then come back with new eyes you can't really always do that in the classroom so the next best thing is to do this you tell them change their whole manuscript into a totally different font and size and color and now go through and reread it and for some reason changing the look of it sort of activates their brain and they see this as something totally new and
(16:12) they'll find mistakes easier that way when it looks different and then once they fixed it they change it back black times new roman size 12 um it it really really makes a difference and then they work in their trios to give each other feedback and i i might talk this more when i when i talk about trios but they they they're basically giving each other feedback but there's consent involved with it like if i if a student wants feedback on the grammar and punctuation mistakes they need to agree to wanting that feedback otherwise it just doesn't
(16:48) do anything but hurt the relationship if kids are saying i don't know if they say that but i guess my kids did okay here's the last thing i want to say about the editorial relationship and i want you to think of yourself as that editor who is trying to help this kid get their piece of writing lifted up on the gr up off the ground and like in tip-top shape that's your job as the teacher once they turn it in to be graded that's it i don't really write that many comments on there i do the rubric they get the points for i just
(17:24) sort of read the thing and i give them their points boop boop you get a four three blah blah blah from here great next time make sure you're read you know work on that opening or whatever i i do not do tons of comments cuz i've talked to them so much beforehand same thing with me like if i wrote a book submitted it it got out into the world and then kirus or publishers weekly were critiquing it i just i'm like gh i i don't even want to hear it it's just too much it's just not the time to get editorial advice
(18:02) but the bottom line of what i kind of want to get across here is that the whole process helped me like come up with this idea for finding diamonds in each other's writing cuz that's what my editor did for me he found the things that were working and it just made me it lifted me up so much that i can handle all the other rounds of revisions that we had to do because of that encouragement it was amazing so i decided to start acting like this for my own students and instead of swooping in and fixing everything i started noticing
(18:43) what was working so i'm just going to read that first time and notice and that's something that i talk about a lot of when you're teaching your kids writing put up a sentence and just say "what do you notice?" get them into the habit of noticing things observing and your fixing brain will show up right away and i you'll notice this i do it too you go get a kid's piece of writing and if there is a typo in there just notice how quickly your brain pounces on that one mistake it's amazing what your brain does you
(19:20) you might have to just like pinch yourself or sit on your hand or whatever you got to do but just notice what's working first that will really really make sure your your relationship with the student is open and they are open to critiques after that first round and if this approach sounds like a breath of fresh air to you if this is if this is resonating with you check the link below and consider taking the full training that i've created i walk you through the whole entire process and now let's move on to the question that came
(19:53) up about tisha's um podcast episode that i did where she explained how she got her writer's workshop up and off the ground and had tremendous success so be sure you listen to that one or it's up on youtube and you could see the visuals of you know what she's showing the folders and all the stuff like that um i asked tisha about does she also teach novels and she did not i they were using a a reading curriculum and they did it that way um and then some other teachers chimed in and basically what they do is once you get the workshop off the ground
(20:29) it's launched you're doing it one time per week i always did it on wednesdays because it was a short day and it just sort of felt right to do it then and make and like put it in the middle of the week a lot of teachers do it on friday that makes sense to them and so you're only committing one day a week to this really structured fun workshop and then i do have a schedule like an a sample schedule of how to fit in everything in by period and by week like if you're if this is a week where you're teaching a novel here's what your day
(21:04) could look like i had 40 minute sessions so it was like woo we were sprinting the whole time so you can look below there's a link and you can grab a free year-long writing planner that i have and within that planner you'll see where i put everything through the year and you can use it and revamp it to however you'd like and it has the link to my ebook in there as well there's so many little goodies in there so check that one out all right thanks for listening everybody and i will see you in the next one [Music]
(21:38) be sure to follow beyond the paragraph wherever you get your podcast and share this with a teacher bestie they will love you for it and so will i to go deeper and learn more about the structured writing method go to structuredwritingteer.com [Music]