Editing Update

Editing is going well, for the most part. I look to be on track to finish by the new year… YEAH!!!

A few issues I’m having though.

• I enjoy reading my book. This is my first time reading it through, and I’m finding that I really do like my own book! Now, that’s a GOOD thing I think… but it’s also frustrating because I find myself reading and forgetting to edit. I edited during lunch last week… and I was about twenty pages later and realized I hadn’t edited a thing. So I’m having to RE edit that same stuff, because there were definitely things that needed updating.

• Making decisions. There were a few things that I’d changed mid-book to see if I like them better, and I did. But now that I’m going back through, I like the OLD way better in the first half. BLAH

• Descriptions are not my forte. Granted, I think I did MUCH better with this book because I was more mindful of it when I wrote, but I tend to skip over things like what people are wearing, and the detailed descriptions of setting. Part of this is my style… I’m not flowery in my writing, I’m more fun and sassy. But I need to work on putting more descriptions into my book too. And given that I usually skim over these things when I READ books… I skim over the same thing in my own book. Hmmm.

• It’s just plain different. My first book was SO VERY BAD because I wrote it when I knew zero writing rules. I liked the story when I was done, but I was savvy enough to know the writing stunk. This book is different, because I’ve spent two years working on my craft, and while I’m FAR from perfect, when I’m editing, I don’t laugh at my utter stupidity. But… then I start second guessing myself. *I* think my book isn’t too shabby… but am I just that dumb that I can’t see it’s glaring faults???

Discussion: What are the things that trip YOU up when editing?

Update: I wrote the above blog post last week, thinking that I’d be all snappy and “pre” plan my blog. So, Shhhh, don’t tell Sherrinda, but I think I’m done editing. I should reiterate though that this is my FIRST edit of my entire novel, so I am not DONE editing the whole book. I’ll need more run throughs… but I’ve been through once and cleaned up most of the glaring errors and rewritten a few parts that desperately needed it.

I should also note that *technically* half way through writing it, I took a 2 week break and edited the first half of the book to help get my barrings. This made the first half of the book much easier to edit than I’d anticipated. I still had issues, but not as many as the second half.

Next Steps: Let my mother and husband read it. I am very blessed to have a Mom who loves to read, and while she thinks my writing is awesome, she’s not shy about telling me where I’ve screwed up the story. And she comes at it from the perspective of the STORY and not the “rules” which I think is what I need at this stage in the book. My husband does the same thing, and has an eye to catch my stupid typos or the places where I’ve changed my mind but not my words. (does that make any sense??)

After that? Um… I don’t know yet. I’ll probably edit one more time, definitely enter it in Genesis… and submit it? When I get up the nerve? *biting my fingernails*