How I Edit
Since I finished the first pass of edit notes on Wish Hits the Fan yesterday, I thought I'd take a moment and talk about editing. Or rather, how I edit.
As you may already know, I write the entirety of the book before I edit anything. Well, that's not strictly true. I do edit as I go along, but it's unconscious editing. As I type, I backspace when I make mistakes or when I think of better wording or whatever. There's a lot of backspacing in there - as Hubs could probably tell you because he can hear the difference in the keystrokes between me writing and the telltale clicks of the backspace key. I don't even notice it anymore. Except when I make the same mistake after the backspacing and I hit that backspace key again like it was a bad little key.
Once I have a whole manuscript from Chapter One to the final words (I don't actually type THE END until the book has passed through editing. It's a quirk with me, I guess.) I email the book to my Kindle. Then I grab my handy-dandy five subject notebook (thinner notebooks are too thin, I like heft beneath my hand as I write) and head for the recliner. I open the file of my manuscript and begin reading - making notes as I go. In red. Always in red. (Another quirk.)
> = something needs to be edited here
R> = revise
D> = delete
E> = expand
I> = italicize
?> = wtf did I mean here?
GoM> Gun on the mantel*
>> = major note
Then I write down the line in question, so I can find it during a search of the manuscript later.
I> Well, isn't that just peachy?
D> drew in a deep
Sometimes, I underline the problem and put a '( with the change' at the end of the line...
> cock and bill story (bull
Sometimes the problem is bigger than a ( will handle, so I drop down a line and write out what I meant...
R> That's the best I know how to explain it.
^ lame and doesn't sound like Tryg
or
?> enslaved again... That last one
^WTF were you going for there? **
When I get all of that written in my handy-dandy notebook, I bring it back here, open the file and begin following my own directions. I check off each line as I complete it - in black ink. If I see something I can't complete right then, because it refers to something later in the manuscript, I make a big black ( in the left margin so I can go back later and make sure I really did fix it by the end.
After I get all the notes entered, I send the whole thing back to my Kindle again and start over, catching anything I might've missed or anything I might've screwed up while I was fixing other stuff. Lather, rinse, repeat until I think I've gone about as far as I can go on my own. Then I send it to my editor.
And that's how I do editing. It's different for each writer, I think.
Hope you found this glimpse into my editing insanity interesting. ;o)
*Gun on the mantel refers to a writing thing. "If you put a gun on the mantel in the first act, you need to fire it by the third act" or something. (Not sure who originally said it, but it's true, so I use it.) It means don't put in something important if you never use it later. Or, at least, that's what I mean by it.
** I refer to myself as 'you' when I write edit notes. It just works for me. Quirk #3, I guess.
As you may already know, I write the entirety of the book before I edit anything. Well, that's not strictly true. I do edit as I go along, but it's unconscious editing. As I type, I backspace when I make mistakes or when I think of better wording or whatever. There's a lot of backspacing in there - as Hubs could probably tell you because he can hear the difference in the keystrokes between me writing and the telltale clicks of the backspace key. I don't even notice it anymore. Except when I make the same mistake after the backspacing and I hit that backspace key again like it was a bad little key.
Once I have a whole manuscript from Chapter One to the final words (I don't actually type THE END until the book has passed through editing. It's a quirk with me, I guess.) I email the book to my Kindle. Then I grab my handy-dandy five subject notebook (thinner notebooks are too thin, I like heft beneath my hand as I write) and head for the recliner. I open the file of my manuscript and begin reading - making notes as I go. In red. Always in red. (Another quirk.)
> = something needs to be edited here
R> = revise
D> = delete
E> = expand
I> = italicize
?> = wtf did I mean here?
GoM> Gun on the mantel*
>> = major note
Then I write down the line in question, so I can find it during a search of the manuscript later.
I> Well, isn't that just peachy?
D> drew in a deep
Sometimes, I underline the problem and put a '( with the change' at the end of the line...
> cock and bill story (bull
Sometimes the problem is bigger than a ( will handle, so I drop down a line and write out what I meant...
R> That's the best I know how to explain it.
^ lame and doesn't sound like Tryg
or
?> enslaved again... That last one
^WTF were you going for there? **
When I get all of that written in my handy-dandy notebook, I bring it back here, open the file and begin following my own directions. I check off each line as I complete it - in black ink. If I see something I can't complete right then, because it refers to something later in the manuscript, I make a big black ( in the left margin so I can go back later and make sure I really did fix it by the end.
After I get all the notes entered, I send the whole thing back to my Kindle again and start over, catching anything I might've missed or anything I might've screwed up while I was fixing other stuff. Lather, rinse, repeat until I think I've gone about as far as I can go on my own. Then I send it to my editor.
And that's how I do editing. It's different for each writer, I think.
Hope you found this glimpse into my editing insanity interesting. ;o)
*Gun on the mantel refers to a writing thing. "If you put a gun on the mantel in the first act, you need to fire it by the third act" or something. (Not sure who originally said it, but it's true, so I use it.) It means don't put in something important if you never use it later. Or, at least, that's what I mean by it.
** I refer to myself as 'you' when I write edit notes. It just works for me. Quirk #3, I guess.
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