I'm working hard on editing Torn Between Murder and Love.
It's amazing, I can type for hours and it doesn't bother me, but when I'm editing, I have to take breaks for my eyes and I almost always develop a headache. Maybe because I'm working too hard.
So far, I've cut out nearly 1K tightening up the story. There are parts, especially toward the end, where I'll need to add in more descriptions, so hopefully it'll round out to about 100K. It's at 96K right now.
What's your self-editing process? Have any helpful hints/tips/suggestions? Anyone might want to critique it once I'm done editing it?
6 comments:
I was doing a great job editing my YA ms down to size. But then I realized I had to do a better job with the descriptions. Oops! It's amazing how that can add up in terms of work count. Mine's still a lot shorter than yours, though. :)
I am sooo the same way!!!! I can write and write for hours and not feel one iota of weariness...and I can stay up all night!! But editing....oh man.....I have to stop every half hour or so for a break and forget about doing it at night. I can't keep my eyes open!
I edit the previous day's work the next day before I start to write. That way it's not such a big job at the end.
Good luck with your editing! Are you going to query agents with this one?
I tend to write more of the meat and potatoes of the story in the rough draft and always end up adding more description when I edit. This story isn't YA though, it's UF with romantic elements, so that's why the WC is so high, Stina.
I'm so glad to hear that I'm not alone in my editing misery, Steph! It's probably because I'm working so hard on getting everything perfect that I tend to get more headaches when editing.
Aubrie, that's such a smart idea. I should start doing that. The only thing is, I'm a panster so I constantly have to go back and tweak things during the first draft. I'm targeting this story for Luna (going to pitch to Margo in person, wish me luck!) but if it's rejected, then it'll be another story for the query-go-round.
I don't care much for editing, although it is so important. I think it is because all the editing I have to do takes up all my writing time. I'm so slow editing, and I second guess myself all the time with it. I'm trying to be smarter when I write stories now, so the editing won't be as bad, but when I'm going back and editing something I wrote a year ago, it's a pain. LOL!
Good luck with your edits! The book sounds cool. :)
You're so right, Cherie, about how important editing is. It's a pain in the ass though, especially since 50K of this story was written in a month (my second nano story) so I wrote that beginning in 2004 (I think, might have been '03). And it's amazing how much my writing has grown since then. A wonderful thing, of course, but it's also why editing is such a burden with this story.
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