The Writing Life: Kate Angelella ’17 Talks Shop
We love hearing from @vcfawcya grads about what their writing life looks like after graduating from the program. Kate Angelella ’17 talked with Wild Things about Angelella Editorial, a group of editors who work closely with new and seasoned writers and authors to help them create a polished manuscript.
Hi Kate! Tell us about your time at VCFA.
I first began attending the VCFA WCYA program in 2007, and my class was called The Revisionistas. I stayed with The Revisionistas for three straight semesters, and then I had to take a leave due to health reasons. It wasn’t until I returned in 2016, adopted by the incomparable and incredibly welcoming Harried Plotters, that I finished my degree. I graduated exactly ten years after I began the program, in January 2017.
I was lucky to be a part of two fabulous classes—both completely wonderful yet wildly different. The first, The Revisionistas, was teeny tiny. I believe when we started we had six or seven people in our class! But they were all such talented writers and I learned a ton from them about the craft and industry of writing. We were a small class, but the small size brought us close together and to this day, I know I would not have the career I do without them. The Harried Plotters were just like their name suggests—chaotic and delightful and friendly and lovely, and they quickly became some of my favorite people. They welcomed me with open arms and it was because of them I was able to settle back into life at VCFA with such ease.
Tell me all about your business. What made you start this business? What services do you provide?
Five months after I first began attending VCFA, I got a job as an assistant editor at Simon & Schuster (in no small part due to the help and support of a fellow Revisionista). I stayed at S&S for many years, where I had the great honor to work with many talented authors—two of which now teach at VCFA’s WFCYA program! But while I loved the work I did at S&S and learned a ton there, both as an editor and as a writer, the business of editing was not all I imagined it to be. Not a lot of people realize that house editors typically don’t spend their days actually editing books…instead, they do the majority of their editing on their own time and spend their workdays in meetings, answering emails, doing paperwork, etc., etc.
A couple of years after I left S&S and moved out of NYC for my husband’s job, I started taking some freelance jobs just to help make ends meet. Within a year, I had a thriving business that was the epitome of my dream job: I got to spend my workdays working from home, drinking coffee and reading manuscripts in my pajamas. Now it’s four years later, and I recently opened up my business to include independent contractors—many of whom are VCFA alumni. So not only do I get to stay home with my ten-month-old son and keep my job (which is basically playing around inside other people’s imaginations all day), but I also get to work with people I adore and, hopefully, offer them an opportunity to enjoy the same job that I am blessed enough to have.
Angelella Editorial specializes in compassionate, in-depth manuscript critiques and author coaching with a heavy focus on kidlit (YA, MG, and picture books). My brilliant team and I provide a diverse range of experience and expertise. Check us out on angelellaeditorial.com; on Twitter: @angeleditors, where we run a monthly chat about our writing habits called #wordnerdchat, the first Monday of every month; and on our YouTube, where our editors get together for bi-monthly craft-based livestream chats. We’ll also be rolling out some online writing workshops this summer, so stay tuned!
Were there any lectures or events during residency that really stick in your memory as having a direct impact on your writing now?
Everything about VCFA had such a huge impact on my writing!
I had NO idea what I was doing—had never taken any sort of creative writing class before. Most of what I knew, I had learned from reading other people’s books. By that point, my husband was the only person who had ever seen my writing. After my first day in workshop, I was so overwhelmed I wanted to go home (and I wasn’t even the person being workshopped that day!). But as residency went on and I attended the lectures, something happened: I began to learn. And wasn’t that why I had applied to VCFA in the first place? VCFA humbled me. I had to admit how little I knew about writing and be willing to scrap what I’d been working on to get better. Any ego I had about writing, even ego I kept inside, all to myself, was stripped away. I didn’t expect that—mostly, I think, because I didn’t realize I had an ego about writing. But it isn’t until someone suggests you do something differently that you realize how attached you are to the way you’ve been doing it, and therefore, how much you thought you already knew.
By the end of my first three semesters at VCFA, I came away understanding that I had truly known next to nothing about writing when I entered the program.
And now, almost twelve years later, I can say with certainty that what I learned through this amazing program has shaped me into a much better writer by leaps and bounds.
Though they didn’t all happen during residencies I was a part of, the lectures continue to educate me both as a writer and editor through the wonders of the forum. A couple of my favorites are David Gill’s “Three-Act Structure” and Margaret Bechard’s “Scene and Sequel.” Those are lectures I’ve listened to over and over again.
Were there any specific writing challenges you focused on that left you feeling like you really worked those challenges out through the process of the programs?
Plot. Haha, sounds like something a writer entering an MFA program should really have down already, doesn’t it? But I really didn’t. I used to be a pantser…and like, a really bad pantser. I would toil for hours over the words, words, my precious words. Sentence construction! Alliteration! Repetition and echo! My words were sometimes beautiful—but nothing happened in my books. My plot was weak; there was no conflict. At VCFA, I learned how important it is to allow bad things to happen to your characters. It’s a lesson I continue to remind myself of every time I sit down to write. There is a difference between knowing and understanding, and at VCFA I came to understand conflict.
I also learned that the ability to give and take constructive criticism is an art form. Real talk? We see it in workshop every semester. Not every writer is suited to be an editor just because they know how to write. The way we communicate feedback and access ideas to be able to assist in improving upon someone else’s writing isn’t easy. As writers, it’s imperative to know what feedback to take into our hearts and what feedback to let roll off our backs, and making that distinction isn’t always easy (in part because ego is involved, which can make the process more emotional than we sometimes want it to be). I believe it’s essential that editors are compassionate people who are well versed in the art of constructive criticism—and that belief is an integral tenet of my business, whether I’m dealing with other editors or with clients.
Receiving criticism with grace… I’m still perfecting that one. Just ask my husband, my number-one editor and the most patient man alive.