Reading To Edit

In an effort to make sure I’m really doing this editing thing properly I’m doing something I can’t say that I’ve ever done before, and I have to say, it’s really really strange. For the first time in probably my entire writing life, I am reading over my book, without making edits. Instead, I’m making notes, notes of what happens in each scene and where potential edits (major edits, draft edits) may be necessary. Noting extraneous chapters, repeated bits of information, all the things one should look for in an edit.

It’s surreal to read your own work this way, I’ve been doing it on my iPad (since Scrivener has an ePub feature), and having my novel as an ebook like this, is… just… I don’t really know. It’s not as if I’ve never read my work before, but I’ve never read it in one sitting, and I’ve never read it without making changes to it as I went along. I’ve never read it purely with the intention of just reading it like a regular novel.

I’ve seen my work in printed formats, and even in the digital ebook format and frankly, it was nice, but I was never going to read it, so it didn’t really have the same sort of resonance that it has now. It almost feels impossibly more real because I’m actually reading it, and that to me is strange. Perhaps this is mostly due to the fact that when you write a novel you have seen behind the scenes, you know how many of these scenes came to be and you know the background and what’s ultimately going to happen, and yet, reading it cover to cover, as a reader would… it’s a little surreal to be honest. Of course there’s still plenty of work left to go, and I’m only on chapter 13 of 21, but it’s given me an idea of what the story looks like so far and I think that’s really going to help me from an editing perspective.