The Joy of Editing!

The Joy of Editing!

I actually enjoy editing my novels, believe it or not, though there is one that I dread a little since it was one of my first and has well over 100,000 words and needs a tense change, character strengthening, some textual rearrangements and rewording etc.

Anyway, the story I am editing now was such a joy to write as has editing been to this point.

How do you edit? Do you have a set standard of application, or does it vary from project to project?

Some authors edit as they go, chapter by chapter, so when they have completed the final chapter they are literally finished with their book.

Others prefer to write their hearts out and edit afterward.

I usually utilize the second option with a slight application of the first of the two mentioned above. Of course there are others, but these two represent the most common extremes for Indie and self-pub authors.

I personally prefer to write facing forward and go back if a thought or detail arises to add/remove from my previous chapters. Sometimes I have added a chapter if I felt something was missing that needed to be there, even if it is the first chapter.

I also have the proverbial independent editor(s) who go through the work and look for inconsistencies, punctuation errors, and content maladies. Then I go through and examine these for validity and edit some more myself.

Pre-Editing

I also perform a sort of pre-edit that consists of proposed title checking, character name checks, historic settings and occurrences research, etc. You wouldn’t want to write a book and find out it has the exact title of a famous work – though many titles are similar and even the same, it is best to have a unique title of your own. I did wait over 20 years for one title of a monologue I had written in the early nineties and changed the title after finding that someone else used my title in the mid-nineties for a play dealing with the same content as my monologue – coincidence? Probably. It worked out fine for me. Instead of a title that accentuated the content, I created one that contrasted the content.

Finally

I enjoy the process of editing because it takes me into another realm, another time, and in the company of other people, people who grow on a soul and transform into old friends, enemies, or anything one creates them to be.

Happy Editing!

 

 

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