Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Eitd, Etd, darn it I mean Edit

Knee-deep in revisions for Created In Fire, I am uber conscious of wanting the book to be as good as it possibly can be. Though there are no truly perfect books these days, the biggest cross I bear as an Indie writer is trying to do an acceptable level of editing on the books before publishing them. Unfortunately, the total responsibility for that rests on me and I have become a terrible editor of my own work. I seem to have traded the perfectionist tendencies I had as a technical writer for creative ones.

While I'm not unhappy with the trade, it's hard to work out the perfect editing process when you control all aspects of it which may be something in traditional publishing's favor with editors serving as gatekeepers for book perfection. Still I have no longings to go that route, so I just want to find a process that keeps me from getting negative comments in reviews about the books needing more editing. I am very grateful to every reader who has bought my books and loved them despite their mechanical flaws. Because of that gratitude, I am taking more and more steps to fix the first published version of every book because all readers deserve the best content a writer can produce. I also have no problem fixing content after release and publishing a revision if one is needed.

My book The Right Thing is probably one of the cleanest books I've published so far because my editor saw it twice. Created In Fire is being seen twice by the editor as well, plus it will also see a proofreader.

Six books into my publishing career, I have learned some things about myself as a writer. One issue I struggle with is to actually stop writing (aka creatively altering the story) when I start editing, but this is not an easy thing to do. My tendency is to keep on writing new content which I discovered introduced new errors faster than my editor could find them. So now I'm adding a proofreader at the end of my process and letting that person look at it after I have finally stopped "fixing" things. Though  he lives in another state, I can still hear my editor sighing with relief.

In self-publishing, it takes a while until you have money enough to hire the amount of help needed. Not many of us can get by with letting a spouse or a friend edit. I'm not 100% there yet, but I am getting closer. I normally put a revision up within a month of initial release because by then I have the time to go back through the book more slowly and without pressure. Time and distance help with the objectivity that is critical to seeing the errors.

Recently, I had the first series books reviewed again for print versions and found yet more tiny errors that needed correcting. So I will be shortly be releasing revised ebook versions of the Never Too Late Series.  Don't ask how many times Dating A Cougar has been revised. I'm too embarrassed to put the number in this post.

Now it's my turn to sigh. I do that a lot when I'm editing.

8 comments:

Patricia said...

I know exactly how you feel, Donna. I've gone over my manuscripts a gazillion times only to have my editor find something I missed. I can't see the forest for the trees.
Patti

Unknown said...

I have my blog posts being emailed to me. Just a few moments ago, I found two things more that I had to fix in the post. Wow. LOL.

You can never catch everything, but you can keep trying. I am finding that the proofreader (a third set of eyes) is very helpful. The first series books will be in print in November. I have a much higher level of confidence in them now.

Thanks for commenting!

JM said...

I'm in editing hell myself right now, with a project for another publisher, and I can't wait to be done with it. My biggest thing is 'looking'. My characters are always looking at something, or someone, or turning to look. Frustrating when you realize how many times you've done it in a ms.
Although I am proud of myself for graduating away from 'was's. That was my hurdle in the last ms.
I think you should take the opportunity to learn from the editing process as much as possible. Maybe someday we'll all be able to type out perfect books. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Good luck with the self-editing. I can miss my own glaring errors no matter how many times I've read it.

Unknown said...

JM, I used to make a pass through looking for "that". I think I learn with every book.

Unknown said...

Carley, I'm intending to defeat my inability to edit my own work well with two edits and a proofread for every manuscript. The two edits were a great improvement--it was successful in that I don't think that book got any negative reviews for editing.

I am planning to blog about this next year and see what worked best.

Ruth said...

Donna,

I could simply write "ditto" at the bottom of this post and be done with it. Wow, you've expressed the process well. I'm still at the point where I cannot afford a "real" editor, but I have come across some wonderful retired teachers who are meticulous.

I also find myself rewriting when I edit....and have made some awful mistakes while doing it...so I love that piece of advice. Just change what was wrong. Embellishing is what had my heroine clutching a PERSON to her lap instead of purse during my first upload of For Love or Legacy. Luckily my readers took it well since I wasn't able to change it for several days. I received hilarious emails about how every woman might find conversations more entertaining if they clutched a person to their lap while they did it. I cringed, then I just laughed. What can you do? It's all part of the process.

Good luck with your current WIP and I can't wait to read it.

Ruth Cardello
Maid for the Billionaire

Unknown said...

Ruth, when I got the first edit of "The Right Thing", I made the mechanical changes (missing words, typos, etc.) and then turned on change tracking to make the more complex changes (plot gaps, wrong details, scenes that didn't work). During that edit, I added over 2000 words to the manuscript and changes to every chapter. After the second edit, I added yet another 500 words. It was illuminating to learn what I was doing.

My first edit of the current WIP "Created In Fire" got changes of less than 500 words. My goal for second edit is less than 100. Now I am getting value from my edits and readers are probably going to see much cleaner books.

My proofreader is a retired person who was described to me as a "grammar stickler". So in essence I hired the kind of person who might harshly review a book for bad editing. Ironic? Maybe. I have no pride about this. I'm just looking for a process that works. My current one is definitely helping.