You know how you spend hours (maybe even days) vacuuming every room in your house, dusting every surface, washing every dish, scrubbing every toilet, and putting everything in its place. You’re exhausted but proud of the monumental task you’ve finished. The house looks great, it’s ready for family , guests, or for you to enjoy by yourself. You, dear reader, feel at peace.
Then you glance under a bed or behind a couch only to find a stray sock or stack of dusty papers. What else did you miss, you ask yourself? You go from room to room, finding hidden pockets of filth, a dirty cup from who knows when, broken crayons. You look around in despair, realizing you are nowhere near done cleaning. Then the realization hits you; by the time you finish all the additional cleaning, someone will have come in dragging leaves and dirt, thrown dirty clothes on a floor, or used clean dishes to eat dinner. No matter how hard you work to stay ahead, the house will never be clean. You’ll always find something else to tidy, to scrub, to put away.
Editing is just like that. I’m on my fourth or fifth draft, each one involving major changes like new characters, new scenes, altered histories. After the last one, I thought I fixed most of the big problems, the plot holes, the weak characters. I knew it wasn’t perfect, but I was hopeful any changes would only require switching up sentences to improve the style.
But the more I poke under the furniture, the more I find to clean up. My opening (the most important fifty pages of the book) is overrun with boring exposition. I spend too much time on back story rather than getting the story moving forward. I need to move information around, spread it out over the novel, and tidy up the scenes.
And let’s not forget the typos. Two of my beta readers asked why I hate contractions as I was always forgetting the apostrophe in the word “it’s”. Though I think I’ll blame that on my sticky keyboard (apparently eating while computing can get food on the keys – causing them to stick).
So I begin my next round of edits – working in comments from my beta readers; but that can be tricky too. I have a joke in the book which one reader found crude and another found hilarious. Who do I go with? I’ll have to decide who is more right and whether the joke fits the overall tone of the book. I’d like to also incorporate more weather and food themed word choices. I think it will create a few more layers of meaning to the story. Some readers won’t notice, but I hope some will pick up on it.
Lastly, I need to complete a dreaded line edit before the conference (gulp, in less than one month). For those unfamiliar – it is exactly what it sounds like. I go through each sentence looking for typos, grammatical errors, and anything else not right. Good times…
This is just the start of what I need to change. I want to make some of my characters’ voices more distinct to reveal more about character. I want to use images to make my themes stronger…you get the point. And I know each time I read my manuscript, I’ll find more to change, more to tidy.
So, dear reader, I bid you adieu. I just found some dust bunnies on page ninety-two.
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