Editing

Editing is something that some writers very much enjoy and that other writers absolutely hate. There are as many ways to edit your work as there are writers, and there is no one-size-fits-all editing bonanza package that you can use to polish your novel or short story. However, that does not mean that there aren't some hard and fast tools that I have found useful in my editing and beta-ing experience.


1. Strike a balance

You have to let the pendulum hang in the middle, somewhere between 'tweak the first chapter until I have memorized every word of every sentence' and 'oh screw it, I refuse to go back and correct spelling mistakes'. Rereading and re-writing rough patches is necessary, and it can even be enjoyable, but if you find yourself reading the same paragraph over and over again while lamenting that it isn't the prose of the Gods, you need to open up a blank word document and work on a different part of your project.


2. Have someone else read it

Get a beta-reader. I don't care how you do it, but just do it. I generally force my work on three people before sharing it. The first one is my girlfriend, who has put up with a huge amount of romance, drama, smut, fluff, battle scenes, monologues, and even the occasional poem. I even force the poor thing to read my Law and Order fanfics, which she hates, and she does it anyway because she loves me THAT much. The second is my friend Richard, who I usually look to for gut reactions and snippets. He is more of a testing board than a nitty gritty critic, but that's exactly what I need from him. The third part of my little group does most of the heavy lifting, and that's Lee, my beta. I shove huge files at her and somehow she fixes all of my extraneous commas and sometimes writes little notes in the margins. I don't know what I'd do without these people.


3. Listen to it out loud

Read to yourself out loud (hope no one is home, or at least not in the room, or you will embarrass yourself... trust me...) Download or purchase a text-to-speech program from somewhere. There are tons of free options, although my Mac has it for free. I have started doing this over the past several months, and trust me, it helps. Even though there's no great voice acting, the ear is able to pick out a misspelled word or a gap in phrasing much more accurately than the tired eye. Plus, you can listen to free stuff online while you're falling asleep! You DO get used to the robot voice, I promise. Mine's named 'Victoria' and I have actually started to enjoy her. Kinda scary, isn't it?


4. Do at least one large, huge, ginormous edit and then put it away and start something new

When you have finished a project (or a section of a project), take it out, dust it off, sit your butt down in the chair, and go through it with a fine-tooth comb. Then, forget about it. Don't go back and mess with it anymore, at least not for a while. You can pull it out again in a few weeks and look at it with fresh eyes, but if you work on the same stuff over and over again, it won't get any better. Do yourself a favor and choose something different to work on so that you won't go insane.


No novel will ever be "perfect". You have to get over that if you ever want to share with others. There is always going to be someone who could have done it better, there is always going to be a more fitting word choice or a better plot idea than the one you chose, there is always going to be at least one typo in a 75,000 word novel. But I do promise that the more you write and edit, the more your work will improve, and the more entertainment and joy you will be able to bring to yourself and others. Now stop being a slacker and go write something instead of reading this blog!