Pages neatly stacked
Words awaiting the red pen
Which darlings die first?
That’s 455 pages, y’all. 105,022 words. Something’s gotta go. Wish me luck and sanity.
Peace, people.
The Editor’s Task
Pages neatly stacked
Words awaiting the red pen
Which darlings die first?
That’s 455 pages, y’all. 105,022 words. Something’s gotta go. Wish me luck and sanity.
Peace, people.
Doing the best I can with what I have
kind of sad, but not so bad with cheese. cheese not provided.
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Wow, Leslie! I couldn’t write 105 words let alone 105 thousand!!! Congratulations and good luck to you.
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Thanks! I meant to stop at 90,000….oops!
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Whoa! That’s some stack of papers there Leslie. Have you started on the next novel yet? 😉
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Ha! Although, I do have ideas for the sequel.
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Litsen that is not that much over the 90 . I mean that. That is honing to the finest thing xxxxx
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😘 I’m taking tomorrow off, then I’m going to dive in.
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Wow! That’s a lotta words & pages, good luck 🙂
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Thank you!
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So exciting
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Thanks! It’s a bit scary, too. What if I have spent all this time writing crap? And truthfully, I might have.
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We’ll see.
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Indeed, we will. Even if it’s partly crap, there are some really solid parts. That’s what editing is for, right?
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Your editing it yourself first? Has anyone else read it? Don’t you feel that’s a little suicidal of the creation process?
I just feel scared for those pieces you might cut out. Poor baby sentences didn’t have a chance to breathe.
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Thank you! My editing will be along the lines of spell checking spell check, making sure I didn’t randomly change someone’s name mid-manuscript, and checking to see if the same characters had the same conversation more than once. I do have a feeling there are at least a thousand words than could be cut with no harm to the story, but I’ll hold off doing anything drastic until my beta readers have an opportunity to read it. This is my first completed manuscript, so I’m learning as I go. 😳
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I hear Ya! From a fellow hyper critical person, all I can say is be gentle. Lol
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I will. And I’m the opposite of hyper critical, so I’m trying to be more so on this. Perfectionism has never been one of my attributes.
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Lots of luck! I thought going through the editing process was so much harder than the actual writing process. I also have my fingers crossed that you and your editor mesh well together. It was hard as hell, but I absolutely adore the fact that my editor really shoved me out of my comfort zone and forced me to do some of the uncomfortable things.
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How did you find an editor? I have two beta readers lined up who both read extensively, and who aren’t afraid to be honest with me, but I don’t know where to find an editor.
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I did a lot of research online and communicated with a couple before deciding on the one I went with. There are SO many different types and services offered, it was really hard to weed through it all to even find an apples to apples kind of comparison for services and costs.
I have a link to my guy on my blog if you want to try and contact him. He really was great to work with, but I’m sure I’m a little biased there because I liked the way he did things so much.
Feel free to nudge me anytime if you have any questions about how I did things or if you need any (very inexpert) advice. I’d be glad to help out if I can, though my knowledge will be very narrow to my own, singular experience.
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Thank you! I’m not shy about asking for help. It’s just that I don’t always recognize when need it. 😳
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When it comes to going from first draft to pretty much anything else, help is always going to be needed. I’m a firm believer that by the time you type out the words “The End” your eyes have almost become completely blind to what is good and what isn’t or what is a mistake and what isn’t. Even one or two people aren’t going to be able to help you fix everything. That said, I also think that sometimes help isn’t necessarily good help. It is a weird place to be as a writer, knowing how to weed through it all (or at least making the show of knowing even if you haven’t a clue what you are doing, as in my case!)
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I’m coming to realize a lot of that. And you’re right; I am no longer objective about the writing. Some days I think it’s really awesome and other times I think it’s awful. I am looking forward to having my beta readers take a look. They’re both honest to a fault.
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Always keep in mind that even in that honesty is opinion. I struggled multiple times with my editor’s suggestions because it sort of conflicted with how I felt a character’s personality or voice should be (or something along those lines). It was really hard to learn which pieces of advice I really needed to take on board and which pieces needed to be considered, but ignored (those were rare and even those mostly had me rewording something or expanding it in a slightly different way for clarity instead). I think this is were having the right kind of people working with you comes in as they will help you work with your goals rather than just tell you to do things differently.
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Thank you. All good information.
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