Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (Mary Strand)

This month at YA Outside the Lines, we’re supposed to talk about writing regrets and/or how we respond to editorial letters. (Wildly different topics, but it gives us options.)

Edith Piaf (best known for singing “La Vie en Rose,” one of my favorite songs) also sang a song called “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” which translates to “No, I don’t regret anything.”

I have no writing regrets.

I’ve had many disappointments, sure, and you can count them by the number of rejections I’ve received over the years from agents and editors. But I view those as their mistakes, or as I prefer: “serious errors of judgment.” (lol.) If I try my best, and I always do, I don’t regret a single thing I do.

Non, je ne regrette rien.

So that leaves me with how I respond to editorial letters.

WITH GRATITUDE.

Yes, a letter from an editor (or occasionally an agent) that picks apart a novel I wrote or tells me ALL the things I got wrong: okay, it’s not like receiving a dozen roses. But the fact that someone took the trouble to try to help me make my book better is an absolute gift, even if it’s one that’s wrapped in ugly wrapping paper.

So I’m truly grateful. I read it. And think about it. And then, item by item, I write down a list of what might be wrong (emphasis on “might be”) with my book. Bird by bird, as Anne Lamott would say. (Bird by Bird is a brilliant book, even if you’re not a writer, but wildly so if you ARE a writer.) And then, bird by bird, I tackle each thing that might be wrong ... if in fact it’s wrong.

Editors are wonderful, often, but not perfect. My own grammar is OCD level, so the odds of someone else catching me in a grammatical error are low. And they may not understand that I call people “lawyers” and not “attorneys,” or my use of other regional terms (hell no on calling it “Phys Ed” in Minnesota), or that I probably know more about sports or law or any number of things than they do, and that I got it right. But one of the best pieces of advice I ever got about editorial criticism is that the editor may have no clue how to fix an issue that they perceive (and their suggestion might therefore be flat-out wrong), but they do usually know when there IS an issue. So if something makes an editor pause, I pause there, too. And then I figure out how to fix it.

So I do all of that, and sometimes it takes a while, but bird by bird, baby: it’s not a big deal.

Just do it. And regret nothing.

Mary Strand is the author of Pride, Prejudice, and Push-Up Bras and three other novels in the Bennet Sisters YA series. You can find out more about her at marystrand.com.