The Love-Hate of Editing

The opening chapters of The Dark Thorn were ponderous and slow, built with massive paragraphs of dropped in histories and forced character thoughts. Reading over them, wisdom from Patrick Rothfuss came to the fore:

"Use dialog to share information with the reader, not heavy exposition that bores bores bores."

Oddly enough, I had discovered this on my own as the writing of the book progressed and the latter chapters had nothing in common with the early chapters—not tone, not style, not readability. Bringing them into line with the rest of the book would take great care and a lot of time.

Now, I admit, I love editing. I really do. It gives me cathartic peace after a long year of writing a book. Revisiting what I have written and eliminating those words that are unnecessary—that add nothing to the story—is like putting the finishing polished touches on a marble sculpture or sand-papering a new table top. It is the end. Reducing the -ly adverbs to only those absolutely needed, removing as many possessive apostrophes as possible, killing purple prose with a red pen as I cross out two sentences in a five sentence paragraph—this makes me happy!

Sick, isn't it?

But giving a book a solid line edit and ensuring its continuity is correct is a lot of work. And takes time. And after spending a year writing a book the last thing a writer usually wants to do is spend a great deal of time revisiting it.

Here in a week I will be finished with my line edit of The Dark Thorn. It has taken longer than I thought it would. From a 162,000 word first draft I have cut 5500 words out and I'm only halfway through. When the edit is completed, I will send The Dark Thorn out to the agent who has shown early interest, formatted to the submission guidelines he prefers. If he likes the book he will undoubtedly ask for another line edit, a series of scene rewrites, and some additional ideas to make the book stronger. I of course will comply with most if not all of them. If it is sold to a publisher, my editor will ask for another edit. I will comply. Then I will have to go over page proofs and ensure the final book is as I envisioned it. More time... and I will comply.

All of this will take months and months to accomplish.

As you can see, writing the book is merely the first step.

All writers approach their initial editing process differently. I prefer to lay down my first draft relatively unedited and once the book is completed going back and doing the line edit while ensuring the continuity of the book is maintained. Others edit every single day, returning to what they wrote the previous day and tightening it up before writing what comes next. Still others do it differently.

Here is what some authors have to say on the subject:

Peter V. Brett says:

• "Editing is in addition to the word count, and I do it constantly. Every day when I sit to work on a chapter, I read from the beginning of the chapter to where I left off in order to get back in the groove, and edit as I go. Sometimes it takes me hours to get to writing new prose because I am not happy with how the chapter is flowing and am editing heavily. I spend FAR more time editing than I do writing, and that's even before I let anyone else read it and consider their suggestions."

Kim Harrison says:

• "Editing takes as much time as rough draft for me, and since I usually edit two or three passes worth, it seems to take forever. I've made it a practice to never edit anything until after that first draft is done, and that works for me. Plotting a book out can take two weeks of 9-5 at my desk, but then I know where I'm going and I can stave off writer's block."

Ken Scholes says:

• "My first drafts tend to be quite clean and I'm what you'd call a "putter-inner." In other words, I under-write and then spend my revision process polishing and wordsmithing and adding in bits that I left out. In Lamentation, I found after reading my first draft and looking over my reader notes that I'd left out two chapters with scenes that clarified and greatly strengthened the novel. On Canticle, I left out a key scene. The time it takes me to revise is also dependent on everything else going on. I revised Lamentation in about twenty days if I count from the time I starting reading the first draft to when I actually had it ready to send to my agent. Typically, my preferred revision process is to read the book, mark the changes, and then merge all the versions with comments from my readers into one document. I love Word's Track Changes feature."

David Anthony Durham says:

• "I do a great deal of editing while I'm writing. By the time I get to the end of a narrative I have a fairly polished book. Or, I feel like I do. Then I give it to my editor and he promptly informs me otherwise. So it goes..."

Terry Brooks says:

• "I edit heavily as I go, so most of that work takes place alongside the creative process. When I'm done writing the original, I do one light edit on the first draft and that's it."

Jacqueline Carey says:

• "I'm an edit-as-I-go writer, so I begin every day by editing the previous day's work. As a result, while I'm not a very speedy writer, I tend to produce fairly clean first drafts (or at least so I think, until I receive my editor's notes)."

As you can see there are a great many ways to approach the editing process.

Amusingly, even some of the best writers in the business believe they have a great first manuscript—until they give it to their professional editor. I want to point out that it is my belief too many writers believe their writing to be great when most writers have never taken a professional editing class. I used to believe I had clean prose until a professional editor marked my first manuscript with crimson slashes from front to back.

Let this be a lesson, gained from experience. Before you turn your book into an agent or editor, please have it looked at by a professional editor. If you are serious about being published, pay the money for it. It will strengthen your book and it will pay dividends in the end.

You won't regret it.

In all of this, the key is finding what works for you.

Happy writing! And then happy editing!