Editing techniques and concentration

No. You'll never be completely satisfied. The day my book was released, I spent hours wincing and itching for the chance to revise it.

Just don't let the revisions take over. Trust me. Learn to establish limits upon yourself when revising and it won't be quite as scary. Make certain that what you ADD actually IMPROVES the story. By the same token, make sure what you CUT doesn't screw you up later in the story. Been there and done that on both. Good luck.

This is why I work hard to do good work in the first draft, revise quickly, and get it the hell away from me fast as I can. Otherwise it sits and rots...

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."

--Paul Valery

"Novels, too."

--Me

mscelina said:

No. You'll never be completely satisfied. The day my book was released, I spent hours wincing and itching for the chance to revise it.

Just don't let the revisions take over. Trust me. Learn to establish limits upon yourself when revising and it won't be quite as scary. Make certain that what you ADD actually IMPROVES the story. By the same token, make sure what you CUT doesn't screw you up later in the story. Been there and done that on both. Good luck.

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Yeah, that's why deadlines are actually a good thing; they train you to understand and accept that you never get it perfect -- you just get it the best you possibly can in the time allowed.

And then move on.

My advice would be to set a deadline for yourself just as though you were under contract. And when that deadline is upon you, put that that finished, revised, polished manuscript aside, start sending out queries, and get going on your next book.

CheshireCat said:

Yeah, that's why deadlines are actually a good thing; they train you to understand and accept that you never get it perfect -- you just get it the best you possibly can in the time allowed.

And then move on.

My advice would be to set a deadline for yourself just as though you were under contract. And when that deadline is upon you, put that that finished, revised, polished manuscript aside, start sending out queries, and get going on your next book.

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Interesting. I'll have to keep that in mind. I already have a deadline (my own) for the 1st draft so maybe I'll do the same with edits. Thanks.

i've never written anything that i didn't eventually want to change and ostensibly make better later on.

you ask me and you don't need a time limit on doing it right. do things right a couple of times first before imposing arbitrary time restrictions on yourself, imo. i mean, how can you personally know what timeframe is reasonable for you without completely finishing the first book? i'll tell you this, i don't see how you can be satisfied with something by rushing to meet a fake deadline. you'll be satisfied when you know you've done the best you could do ~ and a few years later when you've done a few more, you wish you knew then what you know now.

where you find yourself at is completely usual, too, so don't feel bad. a lot of writers start off with an idea, get nearly done writing, then decide to pick up a 'how-to' or visit a message board. then it's like, passive huh? POV wha? what are these 'dialogue tags' you speak of? it doesn't sound as if you're that bad off (or you shouldn't if you've read a few books on the subject). but, if it takes eight passes, it takes eight passes.

sometimes there's no teacher better than experience. the idea here is you don't want to make the same mistakes again in hopes to lessen the amount of work you have to put into it.

I suppose this is somewhat related to the 'discipline to focus' thread on writing novels, but my question more concerns editing. How do you keep your motivation up when editing through a novel you've written? To me it always seems a lot of hard work (which I know it should be) but without the kind of creative spark I get from writing in the first place, so the most I can concentrate on is a chapter at a time. I get disheartened a lot of the time too at the quality of the original draft, because I'm not very good despite ten years of trying to improve my writing, and this puts me off both editing and writing.

So what's the best way to try and focus on it? I don't mean rewrites as such, but more the fiddly little stuff that needs done. And how do you judge when it's been edited enough?

I don't think there is a best way. You just have to knuckle down for it. I tend to put on louder rock music than when I'm writing and I stretch out on the couch and do it. Or I do it while watching TV.

But regardless, neither of those things make it fun. For me, it's about as fun as reading a slush pile.

I enjoy re-writing and adding scenes okay, because I'm taking a story I already liked and I'm usually making it better and leaner and cooler. It's the rest of the fiddly bits that are no fun.

ETA: Actually, I lie, the best motivation for me is the fact that I probably have another novel already going and I really want to work on it, but I can't give it my full attention until this novel is out of the way, so I'd better get it ready to go out to someone as fast as I can.

I actually like revising and editing a lot, which must say something about my sanity. I really like agonizing over the structure of a sentence or the wording.

However, I need the right environment to be able to enjoy the process. I either go to a coffee house or a cemetery or a park (if it's nice out) and try to devote a solid chunk of time to one or two scenes and think of it as time to perfect and preen and polish up my creation. If I work on it at home, I light a candle when I start and blow it out when I finish a session - mostly to symbolize this is my work time, my focused creation-refining time.

I just wish you could help me pound out that first draft or two. That's the hardest part for me. Coming up with a coherent plot and figuring out all those little details.

We've talked about this before, but here goes. I hate it, I hate working, reworking, rewording, finding repeated words and then alternates to replace them, fixing my damned inconsistent punctuation and my danglers, hunting down paragraphs where the rhythm sucks and playing musical chairs with my sentence structure, and going through the same story over and over ad nauseum. Ya just gotta grit your teeth and do it. And after you think you've perfected it, hand it over to someone who knows at least as much, if not more than you do, about grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. Expect to get it back looking like you should put crimes scene tape around it rather than fix it, and start the whole process over again. I've been working on parts of my current WIP for over a year now and it's still not completely refined. Some say it never will be. I miss the creative process of writing so much and want to get back to it very badly, but I'd also like to publish, so I keep plugging away. I'll probably never stop until, and if, it ever gets sold. Keep your spirits up by consuming many many chip butties, and you're energy level up by drinking massive amounts of Irn Bru.

when i edit, i edit for word count. i aim for 20%, but really probably do about 16-17%. sometimes a part gets arranged differently, paragraphs get moved around just slightly. i can't think of a chapter or section i've ever x'ed out completely. i can think of a few i probably should have cut, but i felt they were entertaining and, gasp, heaven forbid i try to entertain a reader. my stuff, hacked and slashed, usually reads very fast, and at the end there's not much passive voice, that kind of thing. often i'll have to change tell to show, which adds a few words.

i love the way i edit. it's the funnest part. i know i'm done when i don't cringe at it or am afraid to look at it in fear of finding a thousand mistakes. i'm generally consistent with my mistakes, so it's knowing which ones i make so i can fix them.

imo, most (budding) novelists hope they don't ever have to edit. editing is a scary concept, one they can deny with the hope, 'hey, it's a novel, not a short story i can only use 3K words on.'

(two recent threads on a similar vein are now together. kthxbai!)

Voyager said:

We've talked about this before, but here goes. I hate it, I hate working, reworking, rewording, finding repeated words and then alternates to replace them, fixing my damned inconsistent punctuation and my danglers, hunting down paragraphs where the rhythm sucks and playing musical chairs with my sentence structure, and going through the same story over and over ad nauseum. Ya just gotta grit your teeth and do it. And after you think you've perfected it, hand it over to someone who knows at least as much, if not more than you do, about grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. Expect to get it back looking like you should put crimes scene tape around it rather than fix it, and start the whole process over again. I've been working on parts of my current WIP for over a year now and it's still not completely refined. Some say it never will be. I miss the creative process of writing so much and want to get back to it very badly, but I'd also like to publish, so I keep plugging away. I'll probably never stop until, and if, it ever gets sold. Keep your spirits up by consuming many many chip butties, and you're energy level up by drinking massive amounts of Irn Bru.

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It's actually not so much the grammar and punctuation stuff that bothers me, sinceI get a load of practice on at work, since part of my job is looking for spelling mistakes, weird punctuation and stuff in the script. I'm not really allowed to alter the grammar, even though it is usually hideously wrong, but even just noticing it and cringing at it is good practice.

With me it's more the superfluous stuff. I'm told I'm far too wordy and have too much description, so I try to edit out as much unnecessary stuff as I can, then I'm told I don't have enough description. It's sort of knowing that this is what happens really makes me not want to touch the manuscript. Like, I just know I'm going to mess it up rather than clean it up most of the time.

I'm still on Diet Irn Bru at the moment. It's if I ever move on to the regular stuff, then you know I'm getting stressed...

PeeDee said:

(two recent threads on a similar vein are now together. kthxbai!)

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Oops, sorry. I should've searched but I forgot to.

Since I left my whip at home, your transgression is forgiven.

My husband gave me a great suggestion the other night while I was in Editing Hell. Instead of moaning and groaning over how I couldn't get even one single chapter to work out right, why not make a list of all the problems I needed to deal with?

DING!

I made a list. It included everything I felt I still needed to add, change, or subtract in the book. Some list items were just questions: "Main character is on the cross-country team. Why don't we ever see him running?" Others were changes I know I have to make for the plot to make sense: "Setting of chapter 6, 7, and 8 MUST be changed from [Town A] to [Town B]." Others were semi-stylistic changes: "Flashback in chapter 9 could be condensed."

So now I basically have a to-do list for finishing the book. After about a week of crashing and burning every time I sat down to do revisions, everything I've done since I made the to-do list has actually seemed, dare I say, productive? It's been much easier to work problem-by-problem than chapter-by-chapter.

I think the same sort of thing could work if you're doing line-by-line editing. Come up with a top-level list of problems you know you have, or even think you have. "Make sure tense is consistent." "Check for repeated use of [main character's favorite phrase]." "Make sure [Character A] speaks in short, clipped sentences."

I actually LOVE doing line-level edits. I'm a total word nerd and really enjoy reworking sentences or finding one great verb that's worth ten adverbial phrases. I love drafting, too. What I hate is where I'm at right now -- editing at the story level to make sure character motivations are clear, plot points don't come out of nowhere, and that my most-loved scenes aren't superfluous. I know I'm going to make it to the other side, but the path there is a real slog.

I edited/revised/rewrote my completed novel 8-10 times before I was pleased with it. I love editing, and I love the finished MS.

Satisfied? Heh. I had to look that up in the dictionary. I don't know what it means.

I'm working on a new project but one day I stopped to make a list of things to change in an already finished, already edited five times project. *sigh* Once I finish the new, I'll go back to the old and start another edit. A major one too but this time, I think it will fix it for good.

Hate editing! Hate it hate it hate it! Uuugh!

(But the end result is worth it..... right?)