The Balancing Act of Motherhood and Romance Editing
Writing romance is no easy task, nor is being a working mother. So here is an interview with a Romance Editor that might help you with those.
Recently I interviewed Kia Thomas. An editor from UK who I came across on Twitter. And she wears many hats. She’s a mom of two; provides line editing, copy editing, and developmental editing services; and… is also an author. Her specialties lie in romance and women’s fiction, and to date, she has worked on almost 100 books and written 3.
If you’re an author, and especially if you’re also a mom, you’ll find this interview very helpful.
(If you’d like to follow her on social media or wish to hire her to edit your manuscript, the links will be at the bottom of this article.)
Interviewing Kia Thomas
Being A Working Mom
1. You juggle a lot of different things. From being a mother of two kids, an editor, and an author, to even doing the social media work required to bring in new clients.
How do you manage all that?
Kia: I have literally no idea! It helps that my kids are a bit older now — I think there’s a reason I never managed to finish a novel while my kids were in single figures. They don’t need me as much, so they can amuse themselves while I’m at my computer.
I also don’t work full-time hours — I do my work while they’re at school, then write in the evenings. I think mainly I do it by making financial sacrifices — I could fit in more editing jobs if I spent more time working and less time doing everything else. And my kids play a LOT of Minecraft.
2. What’s your parenting philosophy or approach to parenting, as a working mom?
Kia: Oh god, just get through the day! I’m not sure I’ve ever particularly had a parenting philosophy — we just muddle through as best we can.
I do think that going freelance after eleven years in salaried roles has taught me a lot about myself and the way I used to think, which has in turn affected my parenting — I used to be so scared to put myself out there, get out of my comfort zone and try new things.
I was really scared of failure, of being less than perfect. But when you run your own business, if you let that fear hold you back, you risk not making a living. So that’s a cycle I’m trying to break with my kids — I want them to know that it’s OK to make mistakes; you just have to pick yourself back up again and learn from it.
I was really scared of failure, of being less than perfect. But when you run your own business, if you let that fear hold you back, you risk not making a living.
Advice To Romance Writers
3. What do you feel makes or breaks a good romance novel?
Kia: For me, it’s a real sense of connection to the characters and their motivations. I want to know at every step of the journey why these characters should be together and what’s standing in the way of their happiness.
Structure is really important too, in my opinion. Romance is a genre that needs a certain amount of familiarity, and a well-shaped story that hits the traditional beats is a way of providing the reader with that comfortable feeling that they know everything’s going to be OK in the end.
4. What are your go-to suggestions to a romance author who has, say, submitted to you a manuscript with terrible dialogue writing?
Kia: Writing good dialogue is hard! The balance of realistic and readable is a difficult one to strike. I’d say I rarely come across anything where all the dialogue is truly terrible, so I would tend to point to a bit that’s good and say “Try to keep up this tone”.
One piece of advice that I do often find myself giving is to try not to clutter dialogue up — in real life, speech is peppered with interjections like “well”, and “er”, but they quickly become overused on the page.
And you don’t need to be too bossy with punctuation either — overusing ellipses and exclamation marks is really common. Let the reader hear the line in their own way.
5. Since fantasy is my favourite genre, there’s something I’d like to ask you regarding it. Many fantasy stories come with a romantic subplot. So can you give me maybe a list of Do’s & Don’ts for writing a good romantic subplot?
Kia: I tend to edit stories where the romance is the main plot rather than a subplot, but I think many of the same principles apply — your characters need to have clear and understandable motivations.
Don’t just have them get together or suddenly break up because you need to inject some drama — there have to be solid reasons that you’ve sown the seeds of already.
Productivity
6. What do you do to stay efficient as an editor?
Kia: I use Word macros and keyboard shortcuts to automate things I do a lot of, which improves my accuracy as well as my speed. But the main way I keep up my editing efficiency is using something a little like the Pomodoro technique — working in pre-defined chunks of time, then taking a break.
I definitely start to lose focus after 45 minutes of copyediting, sometimes 30 if the job is more difficult, so I take a quick break then dive back in. That’s not the case for all jobs — when developmental editing, for example,
I often work in much larger chunks because it’s not quite as intense on the eyes and you often need to sit and think through a story problem for however long it takes. I think it’s really important to pay attention to how you work and what affects your speed, so you can identify those optimal conditions for you.
Research And Debut Novel
7. Your debut romance novel “The Scoop” is out now. Can you tell us what it’s about?
Kia: The Scoop is about an American movie star named Devon Grant who really, really hates the press. But he has a secret, and when the secret gets out, he grants an interview to the one journalist in the world he didn’t hate instantly, an English radio reporter called Cleo Carrigan.
There’s definitely a spark between them, but can he get over what she does for a living? And Devon’s secret isn’t the only one that might cause problems…
It’s a fun, sexy contemporary romance with a few twists and turns and whole load of references to northern England, where I live.
8. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done in the name of research? Either for this debut novel, for an author query, or maybe when something in a manuscript you were reading sparked your curiousity?
Kia: Oh, so many! I messaged a reporter on Twitter who I used to listen to on the radio to ask what the main character in my novel might do at work. I’m constantly asking my husband weird personal questions to make sure I as a writer and my clients are getting their male POVs right.
And I have a dark romance client who often sends me down deeply unsettling research rabbit holes! I’m not sure I can remember any specific ones, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my search history has me on some kind of watch list!
Personal Obstacles
9. What did it take to overcome the mental obstacles that came in the way of writing and finishing this novel?
Kia: This novel actually came a lot more easily than any of the others I’ve tried to write. But I think that turning off that editor side of me was definitely difficult, because those imperfect drafts are a vital stage in writing a novel, and it’s hard for people like me to get that part on the page.
What really helped for me is being part of a local writer’s group. They’re a really supportive bunch of people, and going to the meetings helped me identify myself as a writer and not an editor.
Carving out that space and time to just be a writer is absolutely what pushed this book to completion — I had 20k written for ages, then once I went back to my group in January after almost two years away, I ended up writing the rest, editing it and getting it professionally editing, and publishing it, all within six months.
… your characters need to have clear and understandable motivations.
Don’t just have them get together or suddenly break up because you need to inject some drama — there have to be solid reasons that you’ve sown the seeds of already.
Twitter: Kia Thomas (Fiction Editor),
To Hire For Editing Services: Contact Form
Amazon: “The Scoop” romance novel
