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You need an editor. You may be able to imagine the greatest stories ever told. You need an editor. You may have such mastery of language that you never make a spelling or grammatical error. You need an editor. You may be able to craft your story with the perfect structure every time.

You need an editor.

I feel like this was such an invaluable part of bringing Dig Down to life. It gave it that polish that it needed  so that it actually looked like it was professionally written, instead of something just slapped together and thrown onto Amazon.

Without an editor, the line spacing and format would’ve been so difficult to read, because I would’ve kept the margins the same as everything I typed in Word, with a once inch margin along a page meant to be 8 ½ x 11. How many books do you read that are that size?

Do you know how many times the word “towards” was originally in Dig Down, even after multiple drafts? No, you don’t, because a) my editor corrected the word to “toward”, and b) after seeing how many times I used that word I took started taking some of them out.

In the final version of Dig Down, the sicarios explain that the reason they knew where to find Rob in the end was because Vicky called one of their dealers looking for a fix. It was a logical reason for how they arrived at a home in another state, and also, for the little Vicky is in the story, reinforced she was a junkie. Originally, I had them just showing up.

As you can see, I’m not any of the things I mentioned in the first paragraph. It’s beyond presumptuous to believe the first book I published is among the greatest stories ever told. I clearly am not a master of spelling and grammar. And I’ve outlined over the past few weeks the amount of changes the structure to Dig Down went through.

I’m not perfect. And neither are you.

That’s why an editor is so vital. They’re a fresh, and second pair of eyes on a story. They’ll see things you’ve turned blind to, (like the number of times I incorrectly used “towards”), and because it’s not their story, they’ll spot gaps in logic or notice when things need an explanation and clarification (the sicario example wasn’t the only time I had characters just show up when they were needed).

So if you’ve finished writing a story, and think you’re ready to publish it, do yourself a favor. Hire an editor first. You’ll still be close to the finish line. The last leg of the race will just be a little more uphill than you were thinking.

Bruce found his bench had been claimed by a derelict twice his size. He shrugged it off. That’s what he got for stopping at the soup kitchen first.

It had been the first time in almost a year he’d opted for a belly full of food over the cheapest liquor he could buy. Bruce didn’t regret his choice, even after seeing his bed had been taken.

He fished through the garbage until he felt he had an adequate amount of newspapers to keep him warm for the night, discarding the obituaries and sports sections, selecting the business section as much as he could. These were going to do more than keep him warm. In the morning, when he’d have enough light to read, he’d use them to stay informed.

Bruce found it hard to settle down for the night. Maybe it was because he hadn’t consumed half a bottle to help zonk him out. He suspected it was because he was brimming with optimism.

Life, more accurately, those Moore bastards, had really dealt him a vicious haymaker. He’d had a promising future all mapped out for himself, and they’d stripped everything away from him.

Almost everything.

Today, he’d discovered something in himself he’d thought he’d lost. Pride. Dignity. That bulldog determination that made him Hadley’s problem solver, and convinced him he was the prince of the financial district. From now on, every day he woke up, he was going to remind himself that the Moores may have ruined his life, but he was still here, still that guy who could solve any problem that came his way, whereas those two fuckfaces had been dead for almost two years now.

Bruce surveyed the park from his vantage point on the ground underneath one of the maple trees. It wasn’t much, but it’d be a start.

I’m strong. I’m a survivor. I’m the world’s greatest problem solver.

The problem before him today, and tomorrow, until he solved it, was how to get back on his feet, get a job, and get a change of address.

He had ten dollars to his name, and he was determined to make that last as long as he could. His goal for tomorrow was going to be finding a way to trim his raggedy beard. There would be no more wallowing in self-pity, no more accepting his status as a bum. After that, he would start collecting enough bottles and cans to afford a meal at the end of the day. With the weather improving, more people in the financial district would take their lunches outside. It wouldn’t take too long with a little hustle to earn a couple dollars.

The following day, he’d be out there even sooner, and his goal would be to earn enough for a meal and have some extra change left over. He’d keep up the routine until he could afford to go to the dollar store and buy a cheap toy wagon, so he could haul even more bottles and cans around. In the mornings, he’d read the business and real estate sections, looking for opportunities. He’d go to the library and set up an e-mail account. When he had enough money, he’d open up a bank account, and then head to a brokerage firm and open up an investing account. There were opportunities everywhere, you just had to know where to look and have the determination to see a plan through.

Bruce wanted to fall asleep so he could get an early start to tomorrow, but couldn’t bring himself to shut his eyes. He was smiling nonetheless. His eyes drifted to the pond, where the ducks were nestled besides each other along the shore.

He wasn’t the prince anymore, but right now, being the Duke of Ducks didn’t sound so bad.

The thought comforted him, and finally got his eyes to grow heavy. He drifted off picturing himself at the precipice of a new empire, incapable of failure.

One last, humorous change to Dig Down I thought I’d share.

I spent some time spit balling all of the character names in Dig Down. I chose the name Rob because I felt he could tell everyone “Just call me Robbie,” when he was partying it up and making friends, but he could also go by Robert, the kind of first name you’d expect to see on a business card as the head of a company. Preston just had the feel of a name from the past, but also the first name of someone you’d expect to see running a company.

For the most part, all the names I chose made it into the final version of Dig down. In fact, all of them did, except for one.

When I got my notes from the editor, and I might be paraphrasing here, but I believe her exact words were “I hate the name of your pimp.”

So with the pimp character, I didn’t want to just use a generic name like Big Daddy or Mack Master. I wanted him to stand out, and that included his name. In the original drafts, I’d called him D Swaggzter, and had him change his name to Lord Swaggzter when he built a monopoly supplied girls to the Axel for the parties he threw for the Senators. The name Lord Swaggzter is actually a combination of 2 different user profiles I used for online games with my friends. I figured there’s no way in hell someone had written a pimp character into their story and come up with that name.

I guess maybe there was a reason for that.

It forced me to come up with a new name for him. There’s actually a pimp name generator on the Internet, but none of them felt right. A friend of mine didn’t like any of the suggestions either, and she said that if he was supplying girls to members of Congress, they’d want a more upscale service.

This suggestion ended up shaping the final version of Reginald. It gave me the idea for this whole backstory for a character that’s only in 3 chapters(introduced late in one and killed early in another), that still had me work in his original name, but had him change it to sound sophisticated enough for his new clientele, but going so overboard with it it was an obvious fake name.

I was really nervous when I returned the manuscript back with this change because if she didn’t like this new change, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Thankfully, she liked it, and aside from some last notes, critiques, the book was ready to go.

Although I came up with a solution in the end, the note from the editor about not liking the pimp name was particularly crushing to me because I actually thought the name was pretty good. It forced me to have to swallow a tough truth. The career path as a pimp was not for me. How are you ever going to get respect if you can’t even come up with a good name?

“The cubicles have been very quiet since you left,” she said, finally taking a sip of her drink. “Even now after we’ve filled a couple entry level positions, people still keep to themselves. Everyone walks around with a scared look in their eye, like we’re not out of it just yet.”

Bruce could tell she was one of those people. He hadn’t kept up with the financial world since Hadley had axed him, but there was still a steady flow of new neighbors in the park to replace those who had succumbed to the elements.

“There’s no brash hotshot, marching down the hallways, boasting to everyone that they’re the king of Hadley?” he asked, hoping to change her perspective on the bleak state of Hadley to a fond memory.

It seemed to work. Through her misty eyes, he saw a glimmer of nostalgia. A smile soon followed.

“No,” she said, before taking another sip. “You’re still a legend around there. No one will dare try to fill your shoes.”

For a moment, it looked like she was about to add something. Then her face crumbled in on itself, turning crimson as she did her best to hold it all together.

“The tales about you might even survive after Hadley shuts the doors for good.”

The broke the damn.

Bruce was cradling her head against his shoulder a moment later, stroking her lightly on the back. He buried the thought about after all those years working with her finally being able to embrace her.

“You’re going to land on your feet,” he assured her. “Companies are always looking for good people in Human Resources and you’re one of the best. Besides, like you said, Darwin’s got a job now, so that’ll hold you over for a while.”

Miranda pulled back, wiping the flow of tears from her eyes as she nodded. “I know. It’s just…all the signs are there. The people we let go are being replaced by kids fresh out of college just so we can operate as cheaply as possible. Every month, management is cutting costs somewhere. I’ve already dusted off my resume and have gone on a couple interviews, it’s just…

“Ugh, what’s the matter with me?” she decried. “I’m making you listen to how shitty my life is right now!”

“You’ll be fine,” he insisted. “You’re already being proactive about it. You’re not going to be blindsided like I was. I’m not worried about you making it safely to the other side.”

Bruce could tell she still needed convincing.

“Some of our other colleagues though,” he stared. “Is Bill Werner still there?” He waited for her to nod. “Good. Because I don’t think he’d last ten seconds if he was unemployed. Do you remember the time he was calling up I.T. all morning bitching about how his computer wouldn’t start, only he kept calling the travel unit by mistake?”

That got her laughing. “And when he finally called the right number,” she jumped in, “they asked if his computer was plugged in?”

“And then they wanted to know why he’d unplugged it the night before, and he didn’t want to tell them it was because he’d been charging his phone.”

While she was recovering from her laughing fit, Bruce thought up another anecdote from their time at Hadley. They spoke of was and when, of happier times, and cherished memories.

Miranda kept reminding him he could have more drinks if he wanted, but he still kept his total low. It wasn’t until she got a call from Darwin asking if everything was alright that they realized three hours had flown by.

“Sorry again about bemoaning my own problems,” she said as they walked out of the bar. “After what you—”

“It’s okay,” he waved off her apology. “It’s…oddly…made me feel…good.”

“Really?” she asked, flashing him a quizzical look.

“For the first time in…I don’t know how long…I’ve done something other than wallow in self-pity. I was actually able to help.”

It felt odd to say, but he said it anyway. “Thank you, Miranda.”

“For what?”

“For making me feel like the big shot I used to be.”

With the decision to tell Dig Down across alternating timelines, one challenge this presented was making sure the audience understood where they were in Rob’s attempt to escape with his life. It’s here that the initial draft would look unrecognizable.

There were two things that I did to signify to the reader whether Rob was in Preston’s townhouse, or had already left and was fleeing for his life from the many people who wanted him dead. The first was writing the sections that took place in the townhouse in italics. I thought that this would make them stand out, and the reader would be able to associate, just be seeing a page full of this font, that these were the townhouse scenes. I had it in my head that all italics was the way most authors indicate a flashback scene. As I did some more research after the first few drafts I saw that not only wasn’t this typically done, the reason it was avoided was because it bothered readers.

The second thing I did was separate the two timelines with a title card, although the title cards wouldn’t say ‘Chapter 1’ or ‘Part 2.’ Instead, the title card would read something like ‘The Shark’ or ‘The Cowboy.’ This was actually the reason why so many characters have nicknames in the story, because they would coincide with when they were either introduced or did something of relevance. The first section would’ve been called ‘The Shark’ because that’s when Rob runs into him as he tries to escape, the second was going to be ‘The Battering Ram’ because that’s when I first introduced Spears’ nickname, and the last section was going to be named ‘The Succubus.’

Two things kept me from keeping it this way. One, while I had a title card to separate the two timelines when it went from Preston’s townhouse to Rob after he left, I didn’t have a title card for when it shifted from Rob’s escape back to the townhouse. The story just went from normal font back to italics on a brand new page, leaving the reader to figure it out. The second was that I realized that even though this was my 22^nd story, and that I’d spent years experimenting with different story structures, no one else knew I’d been testing different styles, and this would’ve been a huge leap for readers. It was already going to be different enough bouncing back between the two timelines.

In the end, after a little feedback that it was tough to tell where Rob was in the plot, I added time stamps to the chapters, literally days before its release. It’s one of the best decisions I made for the overall presentation of Dig Down, and it’s probably insane to think of how last minute that change was.

“You still with Darwin?” Bruce asked almost as soon as their drinks were placed in front of them. It’d been on his mind ever since she’d called Hadley telling them she had to take the rest of the afternoon off.

She’d ordered a margarita, he’d settled for a light beer. She’d told him to order whatever he wanted when they sat at the bar, that it was her treat, but he stuck to the lowest ABI he could find on tap. He wanted to be as coherent as he could be while still having a drink.

“Yes, we are,” she said curtly, sensing he was still waiting for their relationship to fall apart so that he could get a chance with her. He couldn’t help but notice the slim traces of a smile.

“Well, it was probably easier surviving the recession Preston and Moore caused with someone else,” he commented.

“It was tough,” she said, nodding, but noticeably treading lightly. Whatever she and Darwin had gone through, she knew it couldn’t compare to what Bruce had experienced.

“He lost his job too. We burned through our savings pretty quickly, and for…I don’t know, eight months…it was definitely longer than half a year, we were living off my paycheck. By the time he got another job, we were getting notices from the bank about being months behind on our mortgage.” The way she glanced down into her drink made it seem like the margarita was home to a bottomless pit.

“Thank god he got a job offer when he did. We’d already scaled back on everything that wasn’t essential, had had monthly garage sales, and were still behind on our payments. And the bank wasn’t dealing with us because so many other people were behind in their payments as well. They could only deal with so many people at once.”

“Maybe we could’ve been neighbors,” Bruce said, then paled. “I take that back,” he added quickly.

“No, no, it’s okay,” she assured him. “I deserve that.”

“No, you don’t,” Bruce sighed. “I know it wasn’t your decision to can me.” He shook his head as he drained half his bottle, then scowled at himself for having done so. She’d buy him another, probably would buy him all the drinks he wanted today. But, for the first time in a year, he really didn’t want to drink.

“It’s just,” he went on, “It’s always bugged me. I mean, why me? I did a lot of good work for Hadley. And…I got to be honest; it actually kind of took me by surprise when you called me into your office in the HR department to break the news.”

 “I made a strong case to keep you on, I swear,” she said, putting her hand on his forearm. It was the first time in months someone touched him without a look of repulsion, or wanting to fight, in their eyes.

“I reminded them all about your stellar record signing new clients to the firm,” she said. “It’s just, they were only looking at the last year of the firm’s data…”

The frown swallowed what was left of her trailing voice. Bruce filled in the rest for her. “So all they saw was the clients I signed leaving in droves to set up accounts with Preston and Moore, and that I wasn’t bringing anyone else in to replace them.”

Miranda nodded. “All the raises you’d gotten from bringing in all those clients didn’t help your case either. It was between you and Stevens. And him and his wife just had another child…no one wanted to be the one to put him out on the street facing these economic conditions.”

“But they had no problem doing it to the guy who had no one to come home to,” Bruce said glumly.

“We all thought you’d land on your feet,” she said. She hadn’t touched her margarita since it’d been placed on the table. “Those investments you always bragged about, about how close you were to having enough passive income to live off of…the directors thought you’d have to tighten your belt a little, but that you’d see it through.”

“Those were,” he started, then didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know. The goal I had to earn a living wage off of my investments always seemed just out of reach. And when the bombshell that was Preston and Moore went off, most of the stocks I owned lost half their value within the month. The renters that I had couldn’t afford to live in my apartments anymore, no one could afford to move in, and because the real estate market was in the toilet, I couldn’t find a buyer until I was willing to take pennies on the dollar.”

“I’m sorry,” Miranda said, finally retreating to her drink for a sip. “Maybe we should talk about something else.”

“No, it’s alright,” he said, polishing off what was left of his beer. “Like the directors surmised, I didn’t have a family to provide for. This is the first time I’ve been able to talk to anybody about what Preston and Moore put me through.”