Editing Insecurities?

Collectonian said:

I've been working on doing the first round of edits to Aisuru, To Love. When I did my first edits to Broken Wing I did so fairly confidently, if slowly. Right after I started editing Aisuru, however, I needed to edit one of the articles I worked on for Wikipedia, after a peer review noted the prose needed work. So I spent several hours doing line edits, fixing issues, etc. I even read it aloud as I worked. The end result was, I thought, much better...but then the reviewer indicated that I had made it worse! Suffice to say, as I try to edit Aisuru, I keep finding myself wondering if I'm really making it better or just making it worse.

How can you tell if you are editing in a way that improves the work or not? Any suggestions for how I can feel more confident about my editing?

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Beta readers - find some knowledgable beta readers. Then I'd suggest having them read the first few chapters before or while you edit on, so that you can see where your writing/editing skills need work on smaller incriments (as opposed to the daunting task of a whole manuscript that you need to re-revise).

And if you are consistently having beta readers tell you that your prose, mechanics, etc. writing skills need a lot more work, consider if there are any writing classes available to you or writing books you could read to help you.

And check out the writing with Uncle Jim threads. Those have really helped many AWers improve their writing skills.

~suki

Don't Listen To Critics Unless the Critic Can Write You A Check. If the critic can write a check, listen intently.

Jamesaritchie said:

Don't Listen To Critics Unless the Critic Can Write You A Check. If the critic can write a check, listen intently.

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I'm not so sure, J. You don't have to be a professional critic to have a valued (or qualified) opinion.

Jamesaritchie said:

Don't Listen To Critics Unless the Critic Can Write You A Check. If the critic can write a check, listen intently.

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This is bad advice for the newbie writer who will improve dramatically if he or she can consider and learn from critique - peer or otherwise.

Endlessly writing without considering and learning from critique is akin to banging your head against a wall - fruitless and will get you nowhere.

So, if your only goal is self-satisfaction, by all means do not seek or ignore all criticism. But if you actually wish to improve and work toward being published, that will take work and learning from critique can be an invaluable part of that process.

Collectonian, if beta readers or peer editors are repeatedly and consistently giving critical critique pointing to issues that are keeping your writing from being effective, at least consider those comments and either work to improve or find more critique to test whether the comments are accurate.

~suki

Finding Competent and Cheap Copy Editors

I didn't think it was possible, either, but I did.

I must say that it is so hard edit oneself. Specially spending so much time with one's own work writing and rewriting a novel, especially people like me with weak grammar.

I think either one has to separate oneself for a long time from their work or have someone else edit their work.

I know it can be an expensive proposition. However, much to my amazement, I have recently discovered and subsequently used guru.com. I posted a job for ‘Looking for a copy editor.’

I was floored to see so many bids by so many qualified editors, who were offering to provide sample edits from 500 words to up to 0 pages of my work. Many of the bidders had Masters and PhDs, with lots of references to check on.

But here the kicker, the price ranged from $10/hr to $15/hr, with estimates of 5 to 10 pages edit per hour. There were some that went as much as $50 per hours. There was one published (Orion, a British publisher) author who offered her services from copy editing to editing for about $2500.

I tested a couple bidders from $10 to $ 60 and I end up choosing a one at $18an hour with maximum hours to put a cap her services. I am going to get my entire novel of 235 pages that needs some serious copy editing for about $500to $600 from someone who is really competent and someone I have confident in. Before hiring her, I spend about an hour on the phone discussing her saple edits and what I am looking for her to do. My grammar is awful.

I can’t really afford it, but more importantly I know that I can’t possibly afford to begin querying without having my MS go through a round of professional copy editing. I know for fact that I would've been shooting myself in the foot by showing my MS to an agent or a publisher in a pre copy edit state. But that is just me.

I didn't give her my entire MS at once. I usually give her three to five chapters, depending on the size of the chapters, once edited, and upon my satisfaction, she bills me, and I pay her the same day.

Guru.com is all legit. I would say check it out. Before that I thought I would have to spend about couple of thousands of $$ to have a basic copy edit.

Alternatively, if you have a friend/family member with solid grammar skills who can play an editor, you can offer them some money or some sort of compensation/barter, even just by having them to sit with you as you edit it their input can be very helpful – at least they won’t let you hurt yourself – it solves your confident issue.

Dorian

I'll assume you don't have the funds to follow Dorian's suggestion. I'll also assume you have the skills to self-edit.
You may have over-edited your story, removing your voice from the novel. That may be what your readers saw.
I would recommend that you go through your story to verify you have all the chapters and scenes where you want them, then look at the sentences, to see if they tell the story in the most interesting form.
At that point you should be looking at overused and duplicate words and phrases. Check your dialog tags, pronouns, and punctuation.
Then read your entire MS aloud. Make a note wherever you stumble or hesitate, you'll need to fix the sentence structure.
Then STOP. It's time for your betas to look it over. You can be sure, they will find something you missed. Analyze their comments, then fix the MS. You should NOT have to re-edit at that point, just insure the fixes flow well into the older parts of the story.

Collectonian said:

How can you tell if you are editing in a way that improves the work or not? Any suggestions for how I can feel more confident about my editing?

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Firstly, do you like your story better with the edits? You should always try to write a story that you yourself would want to read. Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try the advice others give you, because you might end up liking something in there you didn't think you would, but in the end if the story doesn't make you happy, it'll be harder for you to revise and work with it.

Secondly, I don't ever take the advice of just one critiquer as the be-all-end-all, to my work. What one person doesn't like, another will think is just fine. Before you submit something for publication, you need to get multiple viewpoints on it. If one person thinks your main character is flat, then you can ask yourself if you agree or not. If twenty people think that, you probably have some re-writing to do.

And I think that reading a lot in your genre can help you get a feel for what a finished, publishable work looks like as well. The more you write, the better your revision skills will be.

One reviewer didn't like the edits. What was the general tone of the feedback you received from a large number of sources?

Dorian W. Gray said:

I can’t really afford it, but more importantly I know that I can’t possibly afford to begin querying without having my MS go through a round of professional copy editing.

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Libraries are free. Read loads of books - including those on self-editing. Add AW and you have all the information you need.