WRITING RUMINATIONS: EDITING

Editing is one of those weird aspects of writing that can be either extremely tedious or incredibly fun. Editing is like building a house. Picture the outline as the architectural drawings. Then you have the plot and characters, which are the foundation. The very first bit of writing, the absolute rough draft, is like the framing and rafters of a house. Then the editing is all the rest of the building process.

When I write, I tend to write a chapter or two, then go back and do some filling in, tweaking, re-writing, and fleshing out. In this way, I never end up with a rough draft of an entire story, just rough drafts of chapters - these editing passes are part of my writing process, they help me remember what has happened in the story and spark ideas for what might come next in the section that has not yet been written.

These first and second passes of editing are where I put in the  drywall, do the electrical wiring, lay the sub-floor, and put on the roof.

When all the initial writing and first passes of editing are done and I have an entire "rough" draft, I usually go through the entire manuscript once more, editing, tweaking, and fixing: this is where I put on a few layers of primer, maybe paint the walls, pick out the cabinets and countertops, and settle on my final trim selections.

Then I hand the manuscript off to my content editor... and wait...

....but not for long, because my editors are AWESOME!

My content editor helps me reword things that are a bit awkward, points out where my characters are sometimes inconsistent, catches places where I've used the same word seven times in half a paragraph, and makes suggestions about the overall plot. This is like hanging the doors, settling on the flooring, installing the light fixtures, and working on the landscaping.

I make those edits, and then hand the manuscript to my copy editor. She catches typos, punctuation, and grammatical errors (and also keeps an eye on certain words or phrases that she sees pop up more than once and points out when I've overused them).

And this is the point when we start furnishing and decorating the house.

When all of that is done... well, then the fun really begins. You invite guests over, and hope they don't discover a hole in your ceiling.