So you've written a book. Now what?
Any writer who has been at this long enough knows all about the tedium of rewriting and editing a finished book. I remember when I typed the last word of my first novel (now over 20 years ago), I opened a bottle of champagne and toasted my success, figuring I was done.
Oh, the naivete. I now know I hadn't even begun the hard part. If most readers ever saw a first draft of a novel, writers would never sell books. For the most part, the first draft is, in a word, crap. And I think the more experienced a writer becomes, the worse their first drafts are because while new writers will massage and rewrite a single scene as they go, agonizing over every word, experienced writers just want to get the story down. Putting meat on the bones, so to speak, comes later in the rewrites.
My current WIP, Red Awakening, is a perfect example of that. I originally wrote the story back in 2008 for NaNoWriMo. It sat at 50K words (which is what is required to finish the month) for nearly two years before I decided to change the story locale from the original Chicago to my fictional city of Erebus. I went in and did some tweaking, bumping up the word count to 58K, then got sidetracked on another project. (This is what happens to indie writers since we don't have a publisher breathing down our necks.) In my defense, I did complete and publish three books in the gap between then and now (along with moving four times, changing day jobs three times, and still running my design business), so it wasn't time wasted.
But now I'm back with Red Awakening, and now starts the daunting task of fleshing out a Cliff Notes story. It's funny, because in my day job as a technical writer, I'm required to keep description to a minimum. Stick to the facts, ma'am. Technical writing and creative writing are two entirely different animals--same species, sure, but it's like comparing a house cat to a lion--so it's a kind of schizophrenic process for me. In one case I'm taking out fluff, and in another I'm adding it.
The book, as it stands right now, is a straight line from here to there. No side trips, no detours, no stop and smell the roses moments. Oh, it's a complete story, for sure, and a pretty good one, if I can pat my own back. Having put it aside for three years without touching it, I was able to come back to it with fresh eyes and see it for what it is. But while it could stand alone right now, it would be a less than enjoyable read because there's no depth yet. I have all the what, but none of the why. And the why is why we read books. As readers (and I'm a big reader), we don't just want to go on the journey, we want to know the people we're traveling with. We want to experience the scenery and all the adventures along the way--feel the heat or cold, taste the food, smell the roses (or the dead bodies).
That's what rewriting is about. Some scenes may get cut, others plumped up, and entire new scenes written and added. I've just finished a complete re-read and have notes to myself throughout the manuscript to expand, describe in more depth, add a scene about this or that. I didn't do any rewriting on this pass because I had forgotten most of the story and wanted to reload it into my short term memory before making any changes.The rewrite process will probably take me a month or more, depending on my day job and design workload. And then comes the editing.
A piece of advice for new writers--don't combine these tasks. I learned from hard experience years ago that when it comes to writing, you can only really concentrate on one aspect of a piece at a time if you're going to do a good job. Do your rewrites, put the book aside for a week or more, then come back and do your edits. Otherwise, if you're like me, you'll get sidetracked on fixing a scene and the next thing you know, you're introducing more errors that have to be fixed, but because you're also rewriting, you don't notice them. If you get the book where you want it before you start editing, you'll stand a better chance of catching all those little mistakes you wouldn't have missed is you'd been concentrating on them.
Editing isn't a one pass deal, either. I usually make at least three, many times four passes, and I give the book a rest in between them. Don't rush it. The more polished you can get it, the less you have to pay someone else to do. I would also advise you to make your final edits on a printed copy. Many times we see things in print that we would not have noticed on the screen. This final pass is also a proofreading pass.
And now my big secret. I don't use an editor. I know I should--at least that's the popular opinion. See, I AM an editor, and as an occupational hazard, I subconsciously edit everything I read. And because I find so many mistakes, I've lost trust with editors. Instead, I use distance and my own skill. Now, unless you are an editor, I would never advise you to edit your own work. Most people need an editor to correct grammar, tense, punctuation, and sentence structure. Believe me, I've read some indie books (and some traditional ones, as well) that could have used a good editing.
When you write a book, you know your story. You know what you're trying to say, how it should look, etc., so in your mind, that's what you see when you look at it. That's not necessarily what's in the manuscript, however, and that's the biggest danger with editing your own work. That's why, if you have the skill to do so, you need distance. Put the book aside for a week or two--however long it takes you to put it out of your mind. Work on something else to get your brain engaged in a different direction, then go back and edit with fresh eyes.
And then edit again. Mercilessly. Tighten your sentences, getting rid of fragments and poorly-structured phrases. Check that tense, voice, and vocabulary are consistent. Every character should have his own voice and that should carry throughout the book. For example, in my latest book, Return of the Light, Akim never uses contractions, but sometimes, in my haste to get a scene written, I would have him using them without thinking. In editing, I made an entire pass of the novel just looking for and correcting contractions in his dialogue.
The devil is in the details, and the details are what a reader will take from your book. Be meticulous in your scrutiny. Take your time, make it as near to perfect as you can get it. And realize, that even after you've rewritten, edited, proofed, and polished your book to a diamond-like sheen, you're still going to miss something or wish you had written a scene differently. At some point you have to let go and send it out into the world and move on to the next project. And there should always be a next project. Because, to be a writer, you have to write--and keep writing--so you can start the whole process over again.
Oh, the naivete. I now know I hadn't even begun the hard part. If most readers ever saw a first draft of a novel, writers would never sell books. For the most part, the first draft is, in a word, crap. And I think the more experienced a writer becomes, the worse their first drafts are because while new writers will massage and rewrite a single scene as they go, agonizing over every word, experienced writers just want to get the story down. Putting meat on the bones, so to speak, comes later in the rewrites.
My current WIP, Red Awakening, is a perfect example of that. I originally wrote the story back in 2008 for NaNoWriMo. It sat at 50K words (which is what is required to finish the month) for nearly two years before I decided to change the story locale from the original Chicago to my fictional city of Erebus. I went in and did some tweaking, bumping up the word count to 58K, then got sidetracked on another project. (This is what happens to indie writers since we don't have a publisher breathing down our necks.) In my defense, I did complete and publish three books in the gap between then and now (along with moving four times, changing day jobs three times, and still running my design business), so it wasn't time wasted.
But now I'm back with Red Awakening, and now starts the daunting task of fleshing out a Cliff Notes story. It's funny, because in my day job as a technical writer, I'm required to keep description to a minimum. Stick to the facts, ma'am. Technical writing and creative writing are two entirely different animals--same species, sure, but it's like comparing a house cat to a lion--so it's a kind of schizophrenic process for me. In one case I'm taking out fluff, and in another I'm adding it.
The book, as it stands right now, is a straight line from here to there. No side trips, no detours, no stop and smell the roses moments. Oh, it's a complete story, for sure, and a pretty good one, if I can pat my own back. Having put it aside for three years without touching it, I was able to come back to it with fresh eyes and see it for what it is. But while it could stand alone right now, it would be a less than enjoyable read because there's no depth yet. I have all the what, but none of the why. And the why is why we read books. As readers (and I'm a big reader), we don't just want to go on the journey, we want to know the people we're traveling with. We want to experience the scenery and all the adventures along the way--feel the heat or cold, taste the food, smell the roses (or the dead bodies).
That's what rewriting is about. Some scenes may get cut, others plumped up, and entire new scenes written and added. I've just finished a complete re-read and have notes to myself throughout the manuscript to expand, describe in more depth, add a scene about this or that. I didn't do any rewriting on this pass because I had forgotten most of the story and wanted to reload it into my short term memory before making any changes.The rewrite process will probably take me a month or more, depending on my day job and design workload. And then comes the editing.
A piece of advice for new writers--don't combine these tasks. I learned from hard experience years ago that when it comes to writing, you can only really concentrate on one aspect of a piece at a time if you're going to do a good job. Do your rewrites, put the book aside for a week or more, then come back and do your edits. Otherwise, if you're like me, you'll get sidetracked on fixing a scene and the next thing you know, you're introducing more errors that have to be fixed, but because you're also rewriting, you don't notice them. If you get the book where you want it before you start editing, you'll stand a better chance of catching all those little mistakes you wouldn't have missed is you'd been concentrating on them.
Editing isn't a one pass deal, either. I usually make at least three, many times four passes, and I give the book a rest in between them. Don't rush it. The more polished you can get it, the less you have to pay someone else to do. I would also advise you to make your final edits on a printed copy. Many times we see things in print that we would not have noticed on the screen. This final pass is also a proofreading pass.
And now my big secret. I don't use an editor. I know I should--at least that's the popular opinion. See, I AM an editor, and as an occupational hazard, I subconsciously edit everything I read. And because I find so many mistakes, I've lost trust with editors. Instead, I use distance and my own skill. Now, unless you are an editor, I would never advise you to edit your own work. Most people need an editor to correct grammar, tense, punctuation, and sentence structure. Believe me, I've read some indie books (and some traditional ones, as well) that could have used a good editing.
When you write a book, you know your story. You know what you're trying to say, how it should look, etc., so in your mind, that's what you see when you look at it. That's not necessarily what's in the manuscript, however, and that's the biggest danger with editing your own work. That's why, if you have the skill to do so, you need distance. Put the book aside for a week or two--however long it takes you to put it out of your mind. Work on something else to get your brain engaged in a different direction, then go back and edit with fresh eyes.
And then edit again. Mercilessly. Tighten your sentences, getting rid of fragments and poorly-structured phrases. Check that tense, voice, and vocabulary are consistent. Every character should have his own voice and that should carry throughout the book. For example, in my latest book, Return of the Light, Akim never uses contractions, but sometimes, in my haste to get a scene written, I would have him using them without thinking. In editing, I made an entire pass of the novel just looking for and correcting contractions in his dialogue.
The devil is in the details, and the details are what a reader will take from your book. Be meticulous in your scrutiny. Take your time, make it as near to perfect as you can get it. And realize, that even after you've rewritten, edited, proofed, and polished your book to a diamond-like sheen, you're still going to miss something or wish you had written a scene differently. At some point you have to let go and send it out into the world and move on to the next project. And there should always be a next project. Because, to be a writer, you have to write--and keep writing--so you can start the whole process over again.
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