Hows That Editing Going?
I’ve started the editing process on Ordinary Angels, my new paranormal novel (out from Lyrical Press, Spring 2011), and people ask me all the time how it’s going. It’s difficult to describe in terms that would make sense to most people. I’m sure most publishing houses have their own processes, but for me, the first process was a thorough scrubbing.
I’m surprised at how much I’ve found! I know I’ve done pass after pass at this book, polishing my heart out before I even sent it to agents and publishers. Why, oh why was there more to be done? Can’t answer that. I know part of it is because I’ve rewritten a few parts here and there.
One thing that helped me immensely in this pass was using the highlighting feature in MS Word. I made passive verbs red, prepositions green (to make sure I didn’t have strings of 3+ prepositions or double-prepositions like: “She put it up onto the shelf” rather than simply: “She put it on the shelf.”), filler words (just, very, really, well, all, sorta, that, etc) were yellow and I also highlighted -ly blue so I could make sure I hadn’t overdone the adverbs.
For the most part I worked through pretty easily, but then I came to this. I’ve blurred it out so you can get a feel for the visual, rather than the words themselves. But you can see how alarming it looked! The funny thing was, I’d had an idea this whole section (abt 5 pages) wasn’t working, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Well, this helped me see part of the problem! I can’t believe I hadn’t caught this just reading through, but I hadn’t!
This is what I ended up with after the big edit:
It flows so much better now! As I go through each paragraph, I remove the highlighting so I can tell where I’ve been.
I hadn’t realised there was still so much that needed weeding out. I mean I KNOW these things, so why was my chapter full of them!? Now that I know this technique, I’ll definitely use it on future manuscripts before I submit!
Related Posts
-
Character Names – Getting it Right
Posted on May 17, 2011
-
It’s Fall? What happened to June?
Posted on Oct 31, 2010
-
Editing Services
Posted on Sep 6, 2010
-
Jason L Blair’s Operation: Awesome
Posted on Jun 12, 2010
Tags
Share This
Hey that’s really handy! How do you work this feature?
[ Follow me on Twitter: jessica.carmen.bellgmail.com ]
Like a lightbulb came on, huh?
@Diane Admittedly, I did pick the roughest section for this illustration. Usually my writing is much more polished than this. But this segment was one I added to support a sub-plot, and it missed some of the early passes.
@Jessica It depends on the version of Word you’re using, but in general: Select the colour you want to use to highlight. Do a search/replace for that word, replacing it with the SAME word, but with highlighting. You can remove it as you go by selecting the section and changing the highlight color to ‘none’. It’s very handy to be able to SEE it!
[ Follow me on Twitter: IndiaDrummond ]
So editing is like getting a haircut. (bear with me)
Not just because you’re cutting things out, but because when you get a hair cut, they comb it this way and snip, comb it the other way and snip some more. You’re doing the same thing with your book, scrutinizing it several different ways to make sure the look is cohesive and you don’t have anything ‘winging’ out there!
I learned so much from working with my editor at Lyrical Press. It made me such a better writer. I know it’s frustrating at first, but now I’m starting to catch these things in the first and second drafts and all that hard work is finally paying off.
This resonates, fellow writers,not that I’ve published a major work, but because I work with college Freshmen & Sophomores. They howl–Lord, do they put up a squawk, “But, I worked so HARD on that. a C?” We know, don’t we? The bane of writing, I think, is: we know what we intended.
Thanks for telling us how it’s going, India. Love you–Mean it!
[ Follow me on Twitter: girlfrenkate ]
Hi India,
Just wanted to drop a note after I saw your comment on Aubrie’s post. You can download the .pdf of my book here if you want to read it and put it on your Sony Reader:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/33459466/The-Message-by-Lisa-Rusczyk
Enjoy!
Now why can’t someone write a macro to make Word do that! Great idea…
Wow! Good luck with all of that. I always think that editing like this is one of the most tedious parts of writing.
That’s amazing!! I love the before and after shot!! Wow!!! Good luck with this and glad to know you are not only progressing beautifully but sharpening your editing skills! Brilliant!
Yay for highlighting pens – whoever invented them – thank you! That and post-it notes!
Take care
x
I am constantly amazed at how many double-prepositions are hiding within my text, even when I think I’m looking for them when writing.