Karen's Secret Weapons

We're writing in February about Secret Weapons in writing. Shh. They're Seeeeeecrit. Actually, not really. Here's some of my fellow Prosers' posts about their secret weapons in writing:

• Nina's
• Melanie's
• Sheena's
• Sabrina's

(yes, in case you were wondering, Melanie and I do have a complex about the fact that our names don't end in an "a.")

I have to admit, I'm suffering from Where-I-Am-Right-Now tunnel vision, something that often afflicts writers, I think. I also suffer from it in reading, wherein the *last book I read* is my favorite book and the one I recommend to everyone. Unless we're talking Code Name Verity, in which case I might strap you down and use a Clockwork Orange-style device to keep your eyeballs on the page. Theoretically. Because it's that good.

But ANYWAY - where I am right now as a writer is knee-deep in revisions on my novel, ABNORMALS, which I haven't written the blurb for but is basically about teens with superpowers.

I have a few things I do to make revisions easier, since I really truly hate editing with a burning fiery passion. I thought I'd share them as secret weapons, because they're part of how I motivate myself to do the editing.

First, I edit on dead-tree paper. I do! I'm a tree-hugger environmentalist most of the time, but for my primary editing runs on novels I print the buggers out.

Next, I put the dead-tree paper into a binder. Cool binders are helpful, as I look nifty carrying around this read faux leather number, don't you think? (Sidenote: Office Depot or Max, I don't remember which, and it was only about $7-8! And reusable for the next novel!)

Third, LOTS of red pens. Lotsa. That's a word my kids invented when they were small, and we still use it even though they've long since learned proper diction. It conveys *so much.* How many M&Ms do you want? Lotsa. How many kids were on the bus? Lotsa. How many times should we ride the Harry Potter ride at Universal? Lotsa. See? Very useful word. I use lotsa red pens because it enables me to get the feel I want. One funny thing about working in paper is I can be fussy about the pen, the paper, etc. in a way you just can't be with typing. It's a great way to waste more time! And money if you're as addicted to office-supply shops as I am.

Speaking of paper - I really like grid paper or graph paper. I'm a visual-spatial person (do you know about visual-spatial learners? If not please go check out Linda Silverman's site and see her info about us weird folk) and found long ago that grid paper helps me orient myself on the right/left (east/west) axis of my page the way horizontal lines orient you on the top/bottom (north/south.) I feel better when I write on grid paper, so I have sought out good grid paper for years. This pad happens to be a Levenger (note, price is for a pack of 5. Still ridiculously expensive. I think I received these as a gift…) brand pad, they definitely make the best paper out there but it's the spendiest.

And so, there it is, my super secret writing weapons, a bunch of analog world items that help me survive the editing phase. To be honest, I do the same thing with planning/outlining (dead-tree planning) but without the red colored pens, I use black or blue or ticonderoga #2 pencils (black barrel/eraser preferred. I'm very fussy!) and some really nice paper or a new notebook. I love the smell of a new notebook, and the fresh feeling of possibility I get when opening a new one. Ah, if only that would actually write the words, eh?

What are your favorite meat-world writing tools?

Secret Writing Weapons - Sabrina

When we decided on the topic of our secret weapons as writers, my first instinct was to go for the Ten Things brainstorming tip. But I've blogged about that before, so I can hardly consider it a secret weapon at this point. And just last week I blogged about the magic of ordinary things, and unusual places. 

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons license, and user DarkDay on Flickr.

So the writing weapon I'm going to discuss today is... publishing. No, not getting my stories published (though that's pretty helpful all on its own!), but being on the other side of the writer/publisher fence. See, I'm one of those writers who has constant confidence issues. Rejections used to be crushing, because I felt like a rejection of my story was a rejection of me, because I'd put my whole heart into the story. I felt that the publisher had both hated the story like nothing they'd hated before, and that clearly they were just missing how wonderful it was.

What working for a magazine has given me oodles of perspective. I think we as writers do ourselves a disservice when we divide publishers and writers into us and them, because it lets us relax and become complacent rather than challenging our own writing and constantly improving. 

Another thing publishing has taught me is how to critically evaluate a story. Yeah, high school sort of did that too, but those classes were less about quality and more about metaphor and symbolism. The constant dissection of why a story works or doesn't - and why a story works for me and not someone else - has been extraordinarily edifying and useful for me. That's also helped soften the sting of my own stories being rejected. Sometimes, a story just really isn't right for a publication. It doesn't mean it's a bad story - not always, anyway. 

I'm not sure how helpful this tip will be for others; I know editing and slushing isn't right for everyone. It certainly has its soul-crushing moments. But it's taught me far more than it's taken away, and it's been invaluable to me.

On Editing and Seeing Other Authors

I'm editing this week. Hopefully. I've at least taken several productive steps toward editing. I've printed the novel I'd like to edit (my YA Superhero book ABNORMALS.) I've put it in a snappy red binder. I've begun carting the binder from room to room. It's all part of my editing dance where I do things other than editing in the hopes of gearing myself up TO edit. I hate editing.

My cat likes to "help" me edit. She knows I hate it. Good kitty. 

In the meantime, I had a neat opportunity this week to meet Brandon Mull, author of the Fablehaven series and several others. He spoke at my children's school for an author event sponsored by our awesome local independent bookshop, Anderson's.

As I watched Mull give a great presentation to schoolchildren and pondered my own lack of gumption (Mull's first book came out in 2006, which is one year before the year I started writing. He's since had 14 books published and has contracts for at least 6 more. Le sigh.) -- I also got thinking about whether other writers know about this great thing about seeing authors speak/give presentations. It's a fascinating way to connect with other writers, though most authors at a signing are a little busy/preoccupied they usually have time to share a favorite writing website or podcast or answer questions from the audience about getting started or how they work on revisions or what have you.

It's also a great look into the kind of people that make up the writing world (the conference I attended last fall was another really interesting look into that world!) And while it can occasionally fill me with regret (fourteen books, eh? In one more than the sum total of years I've been writing? I mean…to be fair I've written 9 books in that time. But alas, I'm still over here on the unpublished side. And that's partly because I hate editing so much--most of these books I've written are waiting for a little more attention, need me to write the ending, or otherwise require edits before they can be seen by anyone.)

One of the fun bits at the signing was seeing my son set up the a/v equipment!

But to give you a little taste, here are some of the things Brandon Mull talked about in this school presentation (side note: if you write YA/Middle Grade, it's ideal if you can find a way to see an author give a school presentation, as these are generally a little different than the presentations they give to the general public at a signing at a bookstore.)

• Told silly stories about his family (here's my dog Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Here's my dog Buffy running with my daughter. Here's my dog devouring my son. Just kidding!) 
• Talked about the importance of imagination
• Told his most embarrassing story from childhood. It involved falling down stairs and using a leap to try to cover it up and making it much, much worse. 
• Invited some students up to make up an imaginative world where it rains basketballs and giant pancake creatures roam.
• Emphasized the importance of imagination again
• Played a book trailer for his new series, Five Kingdoms
• Played a silly video from the author he was co-presenting with that evening at Anderson's Bookshop
• Answered questions from the student audience (I noticed how he would answer questions in a reasonably brief fashion, keeping the presentation moving.)

To me, this is what writing books for kids is all about. During the presentation the kids were all attentive. (Mull had a great ability to keep their interest with a combination of interesting stuff, silly business, and audience participation.) They were excited to hear from the author. They loved the imagination stuff, kids are so imaginative naturally, hearing an adult encourage and support that side of them was very empowering for the kids, I think (including the kids' own silly business. The raining basketballs? Genius idea that the child might not have felt comfortable sharing with others if not for the context of the author visit.) When the presentation was finished, those kids who bought books were so excited to get the chance to have their books personalized. One fourth-grade girl enthused (upon seeing the set of Fablehaven books her mom had ordered) "I won't have to go to the library for a LONG TIME!"

Our school librarian selected this Occulus as a gift for Brandon Mull, which he gushed about (it's plot-essential in one of his books. You can see all, but your sanity may be impacted when you use the Occulus!)

So what's my point? Even if you can't manage to finagle an invitation to an author visit in a school, you should go see other authors at readings and signings whenever you can. Ideally you'll be doing the signings some day, right? Plus it's a great way to get an extra jolt to your own writing goals. I feel much more excited about that big red binder on my desk now. Maybe I'll be the next Brandon Mull, right? You just never know…

Some Grumbling About Chaos Theory And More Advice About How To Get It All Done

First things first: P.S. I just started a facebook page for this new book. There isn't much on it yet, but if you want to watch it grow from the ground up, this is your chance!

For some reason, I had it in my head that Sheena, Sabrina and I were supposed to be finished with editing by this Wednesday, though it turns out our actual deadline isn't until Sunday. In one way, that has turned out marvelously. I got my edits done by Wednesday. But Sheena and Sabrina are still going strong, which means I didn't really finish editing on Wednesday.

Having three people edit a novel simultaneously from three different spots across the country (literally) is no easy task. We are each editing our own sections, but each section is tied to all the others, so sometimes it feels like our characters can't even take an extra breath without causing a tidal wave throughout the rest of the story. We have to check endlessly that what we are writing isn't going to affect anybody else. It usually does. (We are an experiment in Chaos Theory.)

I'm soooooooooo ready to be done with it. My children have unlocked levels of Mario Super Brothers that they never dreamed they'd see, and you don't even want to know how dirty my kitchen floor was before I finally cleaned it on Wednesday. Editing is beginning to feel like the movie Groundhog Day. I think I'm done, but the next day it starts over. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

On the other hand, I feel honored to be writing with these amazing women. This is the hard part, where we could be seeing each other at our worst, but it isn't like that at all. We're still managing to joke and to find nice things to say to each other. Plus they are insanely talented. I am very blessed.

My point, if I have one, is that I could have used Susan's Pomodoro post a few weeks ago. I'd never heard of that method, and simple as it is, I can't wait to try it, and to teach it to my children, who really need to learn not to stop doing homework every time a text or instant message comes through.

This post about Joss Whedon and his advice on how to be prolific has come in handy for me the past few days. Joss Whedon seems able to think outside the box in a way that few successful people in the entertainment industry are able to do.  As a bonus you can watch the trailer for Much Ado About Nothing, which is in select theaters, none of which are in Maine.

Here's another timely article from the same site: How To Be Successful At Everything

Which led me to this one about note taking and success. I'm usually a failure at taking notes, but Sheena, Sabrina and I have had to take meticulous notes about what we are doing, or it would have ended badly. Crossing my fingers that this particular habit will last past Sunday.

Copyediting

By now, regular Proser readers* know that Melanie, Sheena, and I are publishing the novel we wrote together, because we’re crazy like that. We’re now at the point where we’ve shipped the novel out to beta readers. After that comes revisions, and then… the dreaded copyediting.  By far, the main complaint I hear about self-published novels isn’t the plot or the characters or the overall story. It’s about the grammar and the copyediting.

Why is copyediting so dreaded? One, because grammar is a pain, and two, have you looked up the rates for copyeditors? Some sites quote forty dollars an hour for minor edits. Forty dollars! Have we mentioned that our novel is over 100,000 words long (at the moment?).

So, guess who volunteered to do the copyediting.

It’s actually not so far off of an idea. I write and copyedit regulatory documents for a living. And let me tell you, I don’t get paid forty dollars an hour. Not even close. And I actually kind of enjoy messing with grammar. It’s almost… soothing. I mean, in a way, writing is all about the right side of your brain, creativity and chaos and art. And grammar is the opposite – all form and rules. As a naturally anxious person, rules can help calm me down. In other words, that paragraph above about copyediting rates wasn't shock. It was more like jealousy.

For the past few months, I’ve felt pretty confident about this whole thing. But now that the time approaches, I’ve started looking up copyediting tips.

It didn’t take long for me to get nervous.

I mean, I might do this for work, but fiction is much more stringent. And I might like grammar, but I'm not perfect. I mean, I’m never clear when I should be using ‘that’ or ‘who.’ Between and among are difficult as well, given that I just learned this week that the "between can only refer to two things" rule apparently isn’t quite correct. Why can I never keep straight the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs? And don’t even get me started on my confusion with lay/lie/laid. And while we’re on the subject, is copyedit one word or two??? (Word doesn't tag it as misspelled, Blogger does).

::takes many deep breaths::

All right, now I need to look at some owlet pictures in order to calm down:

Courtesy of Wikmedia Commons

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bubo_scandiacus_chick_Flickr.jpg

 Courtesy of Wikmedia Commons

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Owlet_1.jpg

 Courtesy of Wikmedia Commons

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Owlets.jpg

Much better!  Well, it’s too late now to back out, so I better study up and be prepared for the challenge. I brought home my personal copy of Strunk and White. I’m going to check out a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style from the library. And I also found these helpful links:

http://taramctiernanfiction.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-agony-and-editing.html

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2011/05/do-you-copy-tips-on-copy-editing-your.html

http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/07/11/help-me-understand-my-copy-editor-a-lingua-franca-dialogue-part-i/

And soon enough, Sheena and Melanie will be hearing delightful grammar questions from me, such as: serial commas, yes or no?

Wish us luck.

* Preaders? Rosers? Prosathons? Prozacs?

More About Editing

From clkr.com

I'm 9 weeks away from having my third baby, and I just moved into a new house.  You know, with a yard that has developed a weed problem, and a patch of mushrooms in the back that I can't get rid of, but can't keep the dog away from, either.  Writing time is precious, and almost non-existent these days.  So I'm editing, instead.

Now I think most of us Prosers have taken a crack at posts dealing with the editing process, and there are just about a billion books out there that give varying degrees of advice on the subject.  I'm not going to rehash all that this week.  Instead, I want to tackle something that I've been wondering about this last month or so, ever since I started this red-pen-on-paper-while-trying-to-eat-dinner adventure.  Namely, what are the benefits of paying for an edit?

From what I can tell, it depends on what you want to do with your story, and what kind of editing you are looking for.  Need someone to bounce ideas off of, or just get a general sense of plot and pacing?  You're probably best sticking with a critique group.  It's free, and a perfect starting point.

If you're ready to submit a story to an agent, you can stay with the critique group, but here's the problem I've had with that: you have to give exactly what you want in return.  If you're asking for a line-by-line edit, you'd better be prepared to offer the same for the other person.  You can also get stuck in a mismatched critique situation.  This has happened to me.  No matter how much you respect the other writer, you find yourself critiquing, let's say horror, when you write young adult romance.  I've heard from a few people that they enjoy this kind of feedback because it puts a fresh spin on their work, but in my own dealings, it's never quite worked out that way.  It's hard to give advice on a subject you don't read, and even harder to take criticism from someone when they have no clue what is acceptable for your genre.

So maybe you decide to invest in a professional edit before you send out to agents.  Okay, that's reasonable, but keep in mind, you're going to spend somewhere between $300 up to $3,000 for this service.  To me, that seems a bit steep, even on the low end, but if you simply don't have the time to develop a solid critique group, then it might be just what you need.

Once you start talking about self-publishing, I think it's time to shell out a little bit of money.  However, this comes down to what you hope to accomplish.  Want to be the next Hugh Howey?  Spring for the editor.  Want to finally see your name on Amazon as something other than a reviewer?  You can probably skip it, or skimp on it.

Ultimately, it is up to you to decide what your story needs, but in my own experience, it's essential to get someone to look at your work.  And no, not your mom.  Or sister.  Or spouse.  (Asking my husband to read for me is about equal to saying, "Do I look fat in this?"  It's just not fair.)  You might be the next Charlaine Harris or Dan Brown, but when you've spent 80,000 words (or more) on a story, you probably aren't going to be the most objective reader, so find someone that will be objective.

Yesterday, the illustrious Nathan Bransford announced that he's paying an editor to go over a how-to book on writing, and gave some fantastic reasons why.  (You can read the post here.)  He also linked to more information about whether to pay for editing or not in that post.  It goes into a lot more detail than I can, as he's speaking from his personal, first-hand experience.

So guys, what are your thoughts on professional editing services?  Better yet, has anyone out there been through the process and want to share the experience?

Making a Sow's Ear out of a Silk Purse

or The Sheena Method of Editing

Yes, at one point this was cool.

When I was in ninth grade, I wanted a denim jacket. A specific Denim Jacket. It was a casual version of a Leather-man's jacket with blue suede sleeves, and all my friends had one. I told my mom, showed her the exact coat I wanted, and then patiently waited for Dec. 25 when my new awesomely nineties jacket would be unwrapped.

But there was a problem. My Mom and Dad went Christmas shopping together, and while my mom was checking out something for my brother, my Dad took the shopping list and read, "Sheena ~ Levi Coat", and then proceeded to go into the coat section.

There was a lot of bad Levi coats at that time. Really bad Levi coats.

He picked out the wrong Levi coat. This one had patches, and ruffles. In that coat, I'd easily be the fourth member of the Denim to Die For gang.

 Not at all what I envisioned. Afterward, I asked my mom why she didn't stop my dad, and say, "That's a nice coat dear, but what Sheena wanted was this other one." My mom said my dad really liked the coat he picked out, and she didn't have the heart to tell him he chose wrong.

And it wasn't that the coat was so bad, that makes me retell this story some fourteen years later.  The coat wasn't my style, but it would have kept me warm in the winter. It's what happened after they brought the coat home.

Instead of returning the coat, and exchanging it, my mom decided to fix it. She cut the arms off, and then sewed on blue FELT sleeves.

Shudder.

...not what I ...wanted.

 I remember being very cold that winter, as somehow the hybrid coat would go "missing,"  or when I had to wear it, the wind blew through the stitches.

I have a couple of stories currently in my hard drive like that coat.  Weird hybrids, that have gone through one editing pass too many.

What happens, is the final product isn't exactly what I had envisioned. Instead of using my mad editing skills to make the story the best it could be, I cut huge chunks out of it, or put some random slant on the thing, making it into the new idea that I had. I create a weird hybrid of a story that must be killed.

This is why I hate second drafts.

I've discovered this happens because I'd decided to follow one of the many rules of writing that are prevalent online for writers. Finish a story and let it sit for six weeks. 

For me, this is a bad...monster creating...rule.

The problem is in those six weeks of waiting, I have six weeks of new story ideas. So when I come back to the story, I'm out of the mood of the POV, I lose the voice of the character, and I end up trying to make the story into something else.

...not what I...wanted.

Now I'm not saying you shouldn't write a second draft, what I saying, is "Sometimes what works for Steven King won't work for you!" That's okay. You can make your own rules. And here are mine.

Rule Number One of the Sheena Method of Editing-  Do not step away from the story. Revise while you still love the story. Don't quit while you are still motivated. Only step away from a story when you are done, and step just so far as to put it into the hands of a publisher.

Rule Number Two. Don't let other peoples opinion change the story. Sometimes people who crit a story have brilliant beautiful ideas, and you can tell, because you as the author, think it's brilliant or beautiful.  Other times their opinions don't feel right for your story. You don't have to listen to anything anyone says. You are the boss of your story. Other peoples input can help, but only if you decide to accept it.

Rule Number Three- Tell your own story. What you write might be a sow's ear, and try though you might, you can't make it into a silk purse. That's awesome. If you are a silk worm, make silk purses, the world needs more silk purses. But if you are a Sow, then friggen make BACON! The world needs more bacon. Don't try to be a different writer than you were born to be. Don't be ashamed of your own words, your own experiences, or your own genre. Lay them out the best you can, and don't try to copy another person's style.

Because a story that works, even if it's not exactly what you wanted to tell, is better than a weird hybrid.

Tell your own story, make it the best you can, and then walk away.

~Sheena

What I'm Reading Now - The Bartimaeus Trilogy Book One- The Amulet of Samarkand, Jonathon Stroud.

What I'm Writing Now -  End of the World Challenge

Product Review: Master Edit

Master Edit was one of the first writing tools I acquired (my dh got it for me), and I still find it useful, so I thought it would be worth mentioning to all of you.

The best way to explain Master Edit is probably to view the YouTube clip below, but I'll also fill you in on the basics.

First, to use Master Edit, a block of text is pasted into the text box. After that, the program will scan for a number of different writing gotchas by simply clicking on the menu at the bottom of the page.

Weak words (was, were, look, felt, etc.) can be highlighted along with the number of times they appear.

In a similar vein, repeated phrases can be checked (this is probably one of the most useful features for me - how many times do I want 'someone searching someone's face' anyway?).

Sentence length is analyzed and displayed using different colors so you can easily see if your paragraphs are varied enough.

A lot of other features are also included, such as checking for dialogue tags, -ing words, conjunctions etc.

This isn't a tool to use at the rough draft stage, but I have found it quite useful for a final tightening of my work and to catch mistakes I would have otherwise glossed over.

Overall, I would recommend this product. For more information, the Master Edit website is: http://www.masteredit.net/

hth

What I Wish I'd Known Before I Began Editing

 I just finished editing the first novel I ever wrote for what I desperately hope is the last time. When I told my fantastic news to a couple of family members, their reaction was a small sigh and a fake smile. They didn't really believe me. Like an alcoholic who keeps promising that this drink is the last one, I've promised them over and over that this edit is the last one, and I'll never touch it again.

The last one.

However, every other time I finished editing, I felt unsatisfied. The ending was too trite. Magical elements were introduced too late in the story for reader comfort. I promised the readers a daring and adventurous heroine and gave them one who slept a lot and hid behind the men in her life. All the characters had my own annoying habit of explaining things 5 different ways before they felt satisfied they had made their point. I fixed problem after problem, and somehow managed to not suck the life out of the story.

The frosting on the cake was finding a name for my magical people. I'd been calling them fairies, for lack of a better word. But I hated it. It didn't fit, and I couldn't find anything better. Until I did. And suddenly the story started glowing and rising up in the air and doing magical things of its own accord. And it is done.

Personally, I love line-editing. I love to take a clunky piece of dialogue and polish it up until it sounds natural yet brilliant at the same time. I love to take a paragraph where all the sentences start with the word "she" and move them around like puzzle pieces until they all start differently. I love chopping up some sentences and spooling other sentences out so they aren't all the same length. But man, I wish I hadn't thought it was the first step to editing. All those wasted hours of my life!

  

What I wish I'd known about editing before I began:

1. Give it time to stew. 

In Nanowrimoland, they tell you to stop writing your novel on November 30 and not to open it again until January. I routinely break this rule, mostly because I also break another rule, which says to finish the novel by November 30. But I am a firm believer that a breather of (at least) a month before you start revisions is important. It will help you to approach the novel with an unbiased eye. You'll notice plot discrepancies more, and you'll probably feel much more pleased with the quality of your genius.

2. Look at your book as a whole. 

Make notes in a spiral notebook. Some people call this their novel's Bible, and if you are really good, you'll already have one. I'll never get to that point though, so I'm starting mine here.  

Jot down names of characters and the page they appear. Give them their own page in your notebook, and write down everything about them. (You'll realize things like: Oh my gosh! I forgot Trevor was 6'4 with blond hair and blue eyes when I started. By page 82 he's African-American and only 5'7! And why did I call him Geoffery on page 62?)

Notice if several throw-away characters could be combined into one much more interesting minor character. Are your characters as well-developed as you would like, and do they stay true to their personality throughout?

Make note of any plot threads you start, and make sure you wrap them up or get rid of them. Ensure you've given a rough frame-work for the rules of your world within the first couple of pages and then stuck to them throughout the rest of your story. Map all the story arcs in your notebook. Are all your details presented in the order you want them to be? Would any undeveloped storylines add texture and depth to your story? Is every scene necessary?

What is your theme? Even if you didn't start out with one, you've got one, and when you find it, things (like endings) might change. When I realized the theme of my book was "discovering inner strength," it changed my entire perspective about Jenny.

3. Make the changes to the things you noticed in step 2. 

This is a frustrating place to be, because, as every author knows, even the smallest changes make ripples through your whole novel. The find/replace feature in Word can be your friend, as long as it remains an acquaintance, and doesn't become your BFF. (The day I changed the name of my world from Terra to Masa was the day that "interracial" became "inmasatial").

If you decide to combine the father of one of your character's friends, the coach of the soccer team and the leader of the resistance into one person, not only do you have to make any necessary changes on every page of the book, but he's probably going to morph into a much more interesting character who demands his own chapter and keeps inserting himself into places he doesn't belong. Have fun with this! At the end of the day, if it doesn't work, you can always go back to an earlier draft.

I think this is the place where genius is unfurled. After hours of frustration, in one glorious moment you'll suddenly find it--that idea so marvelous, you can't believe it wasn't integral to the plot all along.

Or maybe not. Maybe you're already so organized that this part doesn't take long. As hard as this part is, I kind of feel sorry for you if you don't need it, because there are amazing moments here.

4. Allow it to rest again. 

Yeah, right. I can't do this step either, but I think it would help.

5. Read your novel. 

Keep continuity on the back burner--note anything glaring, but this time, you are reading for pacing, voice, and conflict. Is there a place where you are so bored you keep taking breaks to get snacks? Combine scenes, add a twist, cut stuff out. Make sure your conflict is as taut as it ought to be. Chances are, you can make changes as you go. If not, you should probably go back to Step 3.

6. Line-edit. Finally! 

Take action to make your first thirteen lines hook-y, clean, clear and crisp. Read your dialogue out loud and make sure it sounds natural. Worry about dialogue tags and whether they should be there or not. Whip out your thesaurus. Cut out some adverbs. Do whatever it is you need to do to make it shine. 

For more information, check out this post..

What tools do you use when you are editing your novel? 

Some people swear by hard copies, and they are particularly useful in step 3, when you might be shifting lots of things around and flipping back and forth. 

Personally, I love the track changes feature on word for critiquing. 

I found a fun web site called The Writer's Diet that checks your writing for word health. It checks for passive verbs, adverbs, words that are often unnecessary, like 'that', and more. When I checked out this blog post, I got a "Needs Toning." I did a Find search for the word "that" and tightened those sentences up. When I retested, it put me into the "Fit and Trim" category, which is a more contented place to be. When I entered the 5 pages of my novel, I got a "Lean" right off the bat, which made me very happy. All that editing must be paying off!

And here's the 50,000 dollar question...At what point in this process do you let other people help you critique?

I accidentally raised my children to be British

 My first grade boy stormed into the house a few days ago and said, "Steven is a prat."

 "What did you just say?" I asked, certain I'd misheard.

 But I hadn't. "A prat. Steven is a dumb old prat."

Oh. Of course. Probaby most parents would be concerned about the name-calling. I just want my kids to be certain their name-calling is anthropologically appropriate for our geographical region.

My older son doesn't use the word prat very often. He says "git."

I categorically state here and now that if any of my children start talking about 'snogging' they are automatically grounded. What a heinous word that is.

Have you figured out where my children got their impressive vocabularies from?

They were raised listening to the audio versions of Harry Potter. Whether this was a good parenting choice or not is a matter of debate. But it is what it is. (When my youngest was about four, he was describing an injury he'd sustained while we were out on a walk. "Then it seared with pain," he said.)

I've been thinking about words a lot this week because I've been doing the final edits on a novel I've been writing. Although I've spent a lot of the last few years of my life editing, I'm not sure I've ever done it in such a concentrated time frame. It's helped me to notice my tendency to overuse certain words that have a plethora of appropriate (and not so appropriate) synonyms in my beloved thesaurus.

Plethora: overabundance, embarrassment, excess, surfeit, glut, surplus, superfluity

Or how about heinous: monstrous, atrocious, odious, terrible, dreadful, shocking, scandalous, wicked, disgraceful, immoral, shameful, indecent, disreputable, appalling, awful, horrendous, inexcusable, unspeakable, abysmal, dire, unpleasant, bad, poor, unpardonable, uncalled for, indefensible, unwarranted, unjustifiable, beyond the pale, reprehensible, terrible

My thesaurus doesn't even mention the words prat, git or snog. But I looked up the word "prat" on thesaurus.com, and I learned something new.

Prat: rump. Synonyms include backside, bum, butt, moon, tail end, tush.

I had to move to Merriam-Webster.com to find git.

Git: A foolish or worthless person. Synonyms include: berk, booby, doofus (yay! Finally, a geographically appropriate word, though perhaps a bit outdated) and PRAT. J 

Do you suppose this means that 'git' and 'tush' are also synonyms? It makes you wonder...

(And no! I don't really think they are synonyms.)

The geniuses at Merriam-Webster agree with me that snogging is too yucky to be considered a real word, so I had to google it.

Snogging: 1. To touch with the lips, or press the lips (against someone's mouth or other body part) as an expression of love, greeting, etc. 2. To cuddle or kiss

Hey British people! That's NOT what it sounds like it means. 

Whenever I read the part where Sirius says he caught Kreacher snogging a pair of trousers, I still blush.

At this point, I could segue into zillions of wise writing tips:

ü      Read, read, and read some more!

ü      Study the dictionary and thesaurus to make sure you know lots of words and the subtle differences in meaning between them.

ü      Increase your working vocabulary.

ü      You can't always trust one resource to give you everything you want to know about a word you've just learned.

ü      When you are editing, if you are using the same words frequently, make sure you're doing it on purpose, and not just because you were too lazy to notice.  

ü You should definitely check out this link to see if you are using your gargantuan vocabulary correctly

ü      When your characters hail from geographically diverse areas, the differences should show up in their vocabulary (unless there has been a cultural phenomenon similar to Harry Potter in their lives).

(I'm sure you can think of more.)

But really, this was all just a buildup to show you this amazing clip a friend of mine posted on Facebook last week. Every time I watch it I laugh harder and feel a greater reverence for the English language. It's the story of The Three Little Pigs told in Shakepearean English by a comedian. Enjoy!

In Case of Emergency

Stuck.
            Stuck, stuck stuck.

It's that part of your story. You know, the part where you know what needs to happen. You know what leads up to that part, and what comes after that part, but for whatever reason the scene, or paragraph, or even sentence, when it's down on paper, has all the tension and allure of a teenager's smelly sock.

What do you do? Well, if you're me you stare at it incessantly, moan, bury your head in a pillow, and announce to the world that you'll never - never, you hear me - make it as a writer. Then your blow your nose and maybe dig into that stash of clearance Easter candy you swore would last till summer break (at least). But more than anything, you get on with things.

So, the most important piece of advice about getting unstuck that I've learned as a fledgling writer? Does it come from a literary genius? From some secret cabal of writers? Did I pull a genie out of a bottle to give me the ultimate answer?

http://disneyoftheweek.tumblr.com

Well, yeah, the last one, sort of. The most important advice I've found to get past that part of a story comes from Disney's Alladin. It's a shame I couldn't find a clip on Youtube, so you'll just have to pretend along with me. Remember when Alladin is snookered by Jafar into going into the Cave of Wonders and gets stranded there? It looks pretty bad for him and poor Abu. He's about as stuck as you can get. But then the genie comes, and after the song and dance number and some witty dialogue, he plops Alladin on the magic carpet and gives this fabulous advice:

"In case of emergency, the exits are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here anywhere! Keep your hand and arms inside the carpet! We're outta here!"

How does this relate to writing? Well...

Here: There's not just one way a story has to be. Your exit to get past that part may be to write the scene the way it wants to come out instead of how you think it should. Some things might need to be tweaked later, but the whole of it might be better in the end.

Here: Talk it over. A spouse, a trusted friend, a writer's group. I was sorta hurt when a few people (including my hubby) said they didn't buy a scene of my WIP. But, after a good stint of pouting, I rewrote it and it's better than it ever could have been on my own.

Here: Sleep on it. Or daydream on it. Give your subconscious leeway to stew, simmer or deep fry your problem. Sooner or later the solution will boil over into your consciousness.

Here: Rearrange the furniture. Okay, don't tell my kids I said that - I'm forever moving stuff around and it bugs them to death. Sometimes great writing is in the wrong place. Cut and paste is your friend - no pain, no long term damage. How would that scene, paragraph or sentence work out somewhere else?

Here: Take out the trash. Maybe that part really isn't supposed to be in your story at all. Be open to the possibility of dumping it altogether, no matter how much you love it.

Here: Write poetry to that part. (see here and here). Yes, I'm serious. A limerick, haiku, a ballad. Get those creative juices flowing in a different direction and see if the phrases you use can't also inspire the work itself.

Here: Move on. Like a boyfriend who won't commit, sometimes you just have to let go. As the days pass, you might find a new and better guy, er, scene. Or, you might also reconnect with that old flame and see it in a brand new light (maybe it's ready to change a little, too).

Here: Lastly, relax. You can do this.

We're outta here!

~ Susan

Write What You Love

And Love What You Write

Completely Unrelated Hunger Games Update: 

I took my older two kids to see it last night. It was fantastic. My kids were not quite so wowed. Perhaps it's because they have not yet become as cynical about books-to-movies as I am, so they had higher expectations. A piece of advice for all you who have yet to see it: Get there early enough to get good seats. We got SO sick sitting in the third row. There are a lot of extreme action close-ups and camera jumps that would have been so much better from farther away. I can't wait to watch it again from the comfort of my own home.

Write What You Love and Love What You Write:

I pulled out one of my old manuscripts this week. I'd been putting it off, but several die-hard fans (including my sister, my daughter and an incredible friend in Texas) wouldn't let me shelf it entirely.

It's a paranormal romance. For some reason, that has always embarrassed me. After all, I'm the one writing blog posts about how much I love romantic subplots, remember? But in this book, there is no mistaking that the romance drives the plot. It comes complete with blush-inducing elements like overpowering magnetic attraction and a love triangle. There's even a chapter where my main character stays in bed for a week after her hero leaves her.

I expected to cringe. I expected to shudder. I expected to X out long swathes of the story as I read it.

But it's good.

Yes, the dialogue needs tightening, and a couple of minor characters could use a facelift. And yeah, the ending has never felt quite right to me yet.

But! I'm smiling as I read it, and for whole pages I forget that I'm supposed to be editing. My villain is hot--and possibly redeemable. My main character is so much more adventurous than I'd remembered. There are shivery, smoldery moments.

It's exactly what Sheena talked about in her post and again when she said "Write the books you want your kids to read. If you think there needs to be more balance on one side or another, then write that kind of book." My story is the kind of book I would like to read. I need to stop worrying about the reaction of some imaginary audience, and simply have fun! In my opinion, the world can't have enough light-hearted love stories, so why should I be embarrassed to write them?

Perhaps I'm the only one who subconsciously believes that the rest of my stories have to be some cookie-cutter  duplicate of my first one. Especially in this day and age, that's a pretty silly thought. My next book could be hard-core science fiction if I wanted, and I could still get it out there. (It would take a lot of effort to write, though I suspect it wouldn't be as difficult as trying to write something contemporary. I don't know why that seems like such an impossible task to me. But I digress...)

So here, with all of you as my witnesses, I am making a pledge. Earth's Gate (Terra's Gate) will be published in 2012! Though it won't be called Earth's Gate OR Terra's Gate. Those are crummy titles for a paranormal romance. They sound way too sci-fi, and I haven't written that one yet. 

It's too bad The Lost Gate is taken. That might have worked. Or Funny Tragic, Crazy Magic. That would have been good too. 

I just had a scary, spontaneous thought:

Announcing the FIRST ANNUAL "NAME MELANIE'S BOOK" contest! Submit your entry by June 15th 2012! The winner will win a free electronic copy of my book and their name in the acknowledgement section. 

I haven't asked them yet, but I think I will ask the three above-mentioned "die-hard fans" if they will be the judges. 

I will post a synopsis next week, for those of you think that might be helpful.

I'm not certain if the submissions should be e-mailed to me or posted publicly. Any thoughts on that?

Aiming for Perfection

I’m going to warn you. This is going to get pretty nerdy. I’m almost scared to post this. Please if you’ve never been to this site, read a few other posts before making any judgments. :)

I’m writing this anyway despite my reservations because I think it is something that needs to be said even if my way of saying it is a little nerdy.

On the writing sites I frequent, I hear this advice a lot. Write the story, do an editing pass or two, then submit it, and start writing the next story. Don’t spend too much time revising a story, you learn faster by writing a new stories. I want it to be clear right now, I do think this is good advice for many writers. You can get trapped in endless revisions and editing, and the more stories you write, the better you will get. This definitely can lead to success, as I’m sure it has.

BUT…..

What if you feel strongly about the story? What if you can see its flaws and know how to fix them? What if you really really believe in it, know it has the potential to be publishable, but it isn’t quite there yet?

Should you send it out, give up on it, and move on? Or is it worth putting a little more work into it, rewriting, revising, and editing until you’ve done the best you can, even if it takes months or years?

I think sometimes when you have a story you really believe in, you can’t give up on it. Kathryn Stockett the bestselling author of The Help didn’t even after sixty rejections from agents, and her family and friends urging her to write something else. She believed in the book, and she kept working on it. It took her five years to finish it, but it turned out to be a best seller. J.R.R. Tolkien spent ten years writing The Lord of the Rings, and we all know how successful that story was.

But it is hard to know when you fall into the trap of eternal revision and editing. Like Leonardo da Vince said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

So how do you know when you should abandon your art?

Okay so here is the nerdy part.

I am a science geek and love graphs and stuff. So this is my theoretical graph (there is no data to support this) of editing and/or revising. While there is no data to support my theoretical graph, this is how, from my limited experiences, revisions and editing seems to go for me.

I “plotted” the quality of the manuscript (y-axis) versus the effort put in (x-axis). Please bear with me. I spent way too much time on this graph, but if you simply can’t stomach it, you can go to the asterisk at the end.*

The straight line across the graph labeled perfection is called an asymptote which means, for you non-nerds, that the curved blue line will never reach the perfection line. You can put an infinite amount of effort into a story and it will never reach perfection. You will inch closer and closer to it, but you will never reach it.

Now indulge me a little and look at the curved blue line. In the beginning (which I labeled A) the quality of the work increases greatly with just a little effort. See how steeply the curve rises at the beginning. This is when you are fixing those plot wholes, adding depth to characterization, cutting and rearranging scenes. A little (relative) effort dramatically increases the quality.

At region B, it starts to slow down. A lot more work has to go into it to see a change in quality. Notice how the curve is rounding at B. This is when the storyline is solid, and you are working on the finer editing; doing line by lines, polishing the writing, fixing the grammar sentence by sentence. It is a lot of work, and it does increase the quality, but it takes a lot more effort to do so.

Now you can fiddle endlessly with line edits. If you are staring at the same sentence for twenty minutes, taking out words just to put them back in, dithering on every word choice, you’ve reached region C where the curve is essentially a flat line with little or no change in quality despite tons of effort being done. This is where you can edit forever with very little or no significant change in your story. This is where you need to stop.

But honestly, why would you abandon your story when you are in the A or even B region? Where you can make dramatic increases in quality with little relative effort?

I think it is easy to impatient with writing. If you are like me, you have shiny new ideas piling up while you are writing, and they try to lure you away from your editing. It’s tempting to move on.

But if you really believe in the story, don’t you want to give it the best shot it has of reaching an audience?

The book industry, whether you go the traditional route or self-publish, is very competitive. I just don’t know how I can hope to succeed unless I’m submitting my very best work.

Now I’m not saying you should do this for every story. Some stories need to be abandoned earlier especially if you are not excited about it anymore or it is essentially unfixable. Nor am I saying that my way is the only way.

But sometimes there are stories that burn inside you that you really need to tell, those are the ones that you should not give up on, that you should at least aim for perfection.

Honestly, those are the only ones I want to write.

~MaryAnn

*If you really can’t stand graphs, my overall point is, at some point in editing, you are spending a lot of time fiddling with the words, but are not significantly changing the overall quality of the story. Once you’ve reached that point, that is when you abandon your story and send it out into the cold, cold world.

The Chaos Method of Book Editing

(First of all, I'd like to thank the talented Karen for being my awesome guest blogger last week She has amazing stories about networking.)

It may sound odd, but I've decided that I ♥ boxes. We moved into our new house last Friday. At first it was as fun as Christmas to tear into the boxes to see what was inside, but now that we're finally unpacking things that aren't absolutely essential to survival, I get a little pang every time I rip open the lid.

 You see, as long as the box is still shut up tightly, the things inside can't escape and make a mess. It's a beautiful thing. When you are writing a rough draft, it's probably a good idea to keep your plot inside some kind of a box. Some things have to be 'unpacked' before others or your story won't make any sense at all.

But your plot wasn't meant to stay neatly compartmentalized. A good plot should be out there where your characters will trip over it, get so frustrated with it that they kick it and break their toes. You know things are working when plot lines start whacking into each other like pool balls.

 J.K. Rowling is an absolute master at this. If you read Harry Potter as intensely as we do in our family, you will start to notice a pattern that looks something like this:

Something exciting happens to Harry
He wants to talk about it with Ron and Hermione
Other people's plots get in the way
Daily life gets in the way
Finally he talks to them and they come up with a plan
Something exciting happens to Harry
He wants to talk about it with Ron and Hermione...

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, Harry has just finished detention with an evil hag named Delores Umbridge. When she touches the raw skin on the back of his hand, the scar on his forehead sears with pain. He hurries off to tell Ron and Hermione, but when he gets to the Gryffindor common room:

 1--Everyone is celebrating because Ron has just been made Keeper of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Ron is too happy to discuss evil hags at the moment.

2--To make matters worse, Ron's feelings are hurt when he finds Hermione sound asleep by the fire.

3--Hermione is asleep by the fire because Fred and George have given her a potion to put her to sleep. They are testing magical joke products on first year students, and Hermione would stop them if she was awake.

4--Before Harry can explain this to Ron, Katie Bell calls Ron away to get new Quidditch robes.

5--Angelina pulls Harry aside to tell him that Ron isn't a great keeper, and she'd like Harry to help him practice.

6--Finally he wakes up Hermione, who says she's tired because she's been making hats for the house elves. After ping ponging through all these subplots, Harry finally gets the chance to tell Hermione what happened. Hermione suggests that Harry should talk to Dumbledore, but Harry is too upset at the way Dumbledore has been treating him, so the next morning, he decides to write a letter to Sirius.

7--On his way to the Owlery to mail the letter, he runs into Nearly Headless Nick who warns Harry to take a different corridor because Peeves is playing a trick in the main corridor.

8--Then Mrs. Norris, the cat, brushes past his legs.

9--He gets to the Owlery, mails a letter, sees a thestral, and runs into Cho Chang, the girl he has a crush on. Then Filch accuses Harry of being in the Owlery so he can order dungbombs. Harry wants to talk about these strange events to Ron and Hermione... And the cycle continues.

 Whose story is this, anyway? 

The whole Harry Potter series is filled with that kind of pattern. Harry spends much more time reacting to the other character's plots than he spends on his own. It could be argued that the other character's plots become his plot. Of course, the part I just summarized came from a chapter in the fifth book in the series. J.K. Rowling has had a lot of time to give her characters stories that can trip Harry up. That's the main reason every one of her books gets exponentially larger. It's harder to do in a stand-alone novel, or in the first book of a series, but it's so worth it.

I'm not privy to the inner workings of J.K. Rowling's mind, obviously. But I doubt that things happened in this order in the first draft. I imagine everything was much more compartmentalized in the beginning. One gargantuan box held Harry's story, and stacked on top of that was a box containing Hagrid's story, and another box had Fred and George's joke shop in it.

Eventually though, she was wise enough to unpack all the story ideas and let them play with each other. I imagine her thinking, "Hmm...things are going too smoothly for Harry right now. What can Filch do to mess things up? And it's probably time to move on to the next piece of Fred and George's story. And I know! Peeves is always good for at least half a page of frustration."

Wait a minute, what's a thestral?

In my imaginary first draft of Harry Potter 5, Harry didn't see thestrals while he stood in the owlery. Instead, what happened was that somewhere in the editing process, J.K. Rowling realized that she wanted thestrals to play an important part at the end of the book. So she had to fit them in to the book in several major places. She does that by creating a mystery around the thestrals. Only Harry and Luna can see them, so he fears he is going crazy. Smaller references to thestrals scattered throughout the book serve to keep them fresh in our mind so that we're not thrown off guard when they become important at the end.

 In the first draft of my own novel, Earth's Gate, a dragon and a griffin showed up in the last quarter of the book. Adding major magical elements to the last quarter of a fantasy novel is usually a bad idea, so I had to sift through my novel to find places to reference them. I added a meeting with a captive griffin to the first chapter, and a bear attack in chapter 5 got turned into a dragon attack. Then I started finding ways to add references to the creatures everywhere I turned, and pretty soon I had an unexpected sub-plot. J.K. Rowling's thought process was probably so much more organized than mine that they are barely comparable. Still, I would pay good money to get a sneak peak at her first draft. 


Ring, ring! 

 In television shows, have you ever noticed the way that phone calls come right at the end of important conversations? (This even happens in my beloved Burn Notice.) When I'm editing a story, I like to at least consider having the phone call happen at the least opportune moment. I like to think of it as the Chaos Method of Book Writing. Unpack all your boxes. Shake well. See what happens. But be sure to save your first draft. Just in case.

Check out this amazing blog post, in JK Rowling's own words.

 Do you write your subplots one at a time? Is your mind organized enough to keep them all chugging along at the right pace? If so, how do you do it? I'd love to hear your tips.

Easy Peasy - Newb!

 I think to get to the point of this post I'm going to have to start with some background first. You see, I've only been writing  for about two years (on my second writing anniversary coming up in a few months, I’ll tell you the story of how the American Red Cross almost killed me and how Jason Bourne saved my life – or at least jump started my writing career). Believe it or not, before that event there had been nada, zilch, not a creative word from my brain since high school.

Because of my fledgling status as a writer, I often feel insecure when I post about writing - like people are rolling their eyes saying, “Sheesh, Newb! I knew that a decade ago, at least!” Which is probably the truth (yes, even you there checking in from Malaysia – you know more than me). You’ve all just been too kind to say anything.

I’ve tried my best, though, to learn the craft of writing and practice, practice, practice. And now I find myself in possession of a bright, shiny manuscript. Or a stack of scribbled pages. Or a pile of hogwash, depending on how I feel the day you ask me about it. My novel has everything it needs to be a good story – a boy and a girl and a setting and some conflict and a few bad guys thrown in for good measure.

But what it really needs is a good editing. And editing is killing me (even now, just thinking about writing this post about editing I feel the urge to take a break and go watch another episode of Burn Notice).  In every stage of writing I’ve gone through I’ve thought, ‘Oh, it will be so much easier when I’m doing X,Y, or Z.’ If I’m brainstorming, outlining will be easy. When I’m outlining, I think the actual writing will be easier. And now that the writing’s done – well, editing isn’t easier; it’s dang hard.

 What I’d really love to do is turn this post over to all of you who know what you’re doing so you can share some hints on how you edit successfully – I could use the help.

Maybe to jump start the conversation, I’ll share with you my woefully Newb understanding of editing:

First, begin with examining the big arcs. Are your characters and their character progressions compelling? Does the storyline have enough meat to carry the tale to the end? Have you got your secondary storylines all tucked in at the right places? Does it all make sense? What are the gaping holes that need patching?

Second, look at each scene. Does it move the story forward, reveal information or help the reader connect with the characters? (technically scenes should do all these)

Lastly, look at sentence structure and word choice. Are sentences of varying lengths and construction? Have those pesky adverbs and weak words been culled? Does it flow smoothly when read out loud? Does it really say what you think it says? (Outside eyes are often a must on this part.) And, hardest of all for me, how’s your grammar and punctuation? (Me and commas - we’re not friends.)

Technically that seems like a straight forward plan. The hard part of writing is done, right? So editing should be easy peasy, right? Not so. Here are a few other things I’ve picked up on this learning curve from Hades. Netflix Streaming is not a writer’s friend. Chocolate might be my friend, but it is not the friend of my waistline. The thesaurus is only my friend if it doesn’t take half an hour to find that one special word. My husband remains my best friend even when his shoulder gets soggy from me crying on it.

And the number one thing I’ve learned about editing – start at the top of the above list, not the bottom. Do NOT begin with making pretty sentences because you will end up killing them (and kill most of your writing time, too). Get the plot in order, get the scenes in order, and then get the words in order.

Easy peasy.  (And there’s still probably time for Burn Notice, too.)

How do you successfully edit? (Please share. Please!)

~ Susan

The Hack Job

After wrapping Christmas presents with my four-year-old (she’s my tape girl, and yes our presents look professionally wrapped), I made the mistake of leaving out the scissors while I started a load of laundry.

Three minutes later, she calls to me. “Mom, come look at this.”

I walk in and see her holding a lock of hair out with the pair of scissors positioned to cut. There are a few beautiful dark curls piled on the carpet in front of her.

I did my best to stay calm. “What are you doing sweetie.”

“My bangs are in my face, so I’m cutting them.” The lock she holds is nowhere near her bangs, but she’s doing her best.

Editing or Hacking?

Right now I’m knee deep in line edits. And I feel like a little girl trying to trim the hair out of my eyes, holding a lock of hair ready to cut, but unsure if that lock is even part of the problem.

Editing is tough. There is always the fear of editing out the voice, but I’m not delusional enough to believe that my fingers tap out golden, perfect prose as they masterfully move across the keyboard. I need to clean up my prose: get rid of those pesky words that don't add value, smooth out those awkward phrases, and seek and destroy all needless repetition.

I need my manuscript to be at a professional level without removing all traces of the quirks that make my writing my writing. I believe a strong, unique voice doesn't come from what is done right, but what is brilliantly done wrong.

Striking the balance is tough, and I'd certainly like some professional help. But if I want to be a professional writer, I need to learn how to write like one. So I’m stuck with trial and error.

Time to get out those scissors.

Line Editing Advice From Someone Who is Admittedly Just Learning


Before I edit, I always save an unedited version. So if I hack my voice to shreds, I can always go back to the original with nothing lost but time.

I always trust my instincts. If the word feels like it belongs there, I keep it.

Here are some things I look for when I'm editing. I usually do a "find" for these words or phrases, and read over the sentences a few times trying to decide if the word should be there or just somehow snuck in.

1. Meaningless modifiers like actually, somewhat, kind of, nearly, usually, almost, etc.

2. Adverbs, especially the ly ones. I do an "ly" search.

3. That

4. "There was" or "It was" at the beginning of sentences.

5. If you are doing first person or close third any filtering phrases like "he thought,” "he felt," or "he saw” can usually be eliminated.

6. "Was verb-ing." Usually the "was" can be removed and the verb changed to past tense.

7. Only, really, and still. Sure these may fit other categories, but I use them a lot, so I need to hyperaware of them. Otherwise they will be in every paragraph.

8. Catch words and phrases I seem to use too much like cold, chills, stomach tightening, etc.

At the end of editing, I read the whole thing backwards sentence by sentence to catch grammar mistakes. I’m sure I always miss one or two. :)

I also hear reading it aloud will help identify flow and rhythm problems. I'll be doing that for this manuscript.

Editing Advice from Professionals

SF author David Louis Edelman gives great line editing advice.

This advice from professional editor Lisa Torcasso Downing doesn't have to do with cutting out wordage but are things to look for in an editing pass. "Writing the reaction before the causal action" is one I found a lot in my MS, but all the advice is gold. Check it out.

If you have any other suggestions, please do share. I need all the help I can get.

Come on, give a girl some editing advice before I butcher my bangs. :)

~MaryAnn

ETA: Freelance editor Kristy G. Stewart stopped by and added a link to some great editing advice. I'm linking it here, cause it is well worth the read. Thanks Kristy. :)