It’s not ready yet…

‘What are you doing?’

‘Editing.’

‘Still? Nah, I reckon you’re procrastinating. Don’t want to submit in case it’s rejected.’

I’m sure most writers have had this conversation at least once in their career, their antagonist being a parent, a sibling, a friend, a co-worker. Guarantee none of those were writers.

And if we succumb to the criticism and submit before the work is ready, chances are high we’ll be rejected.

For the self-published writer the outcome could be worse than a once-off rejection. It could be a subsequent lifetime avoidance.

There’s more than one type of edit

You have the story in your head, you know exactly where you’re going with it. You hammer the keys to get it all down. Wow! Perfecto. You show it to a friend, or a fellow writer. But they’re not as excited as you. They frown. Look away. Clearly they don’t know what to say. You press them.

‘You really want me to tell you? It’s that I don’t get the plot. There seems to be bits missing. There’s some good stuff here, but they don’t connect.’

Oops. Plot holes. Invisible to the writer. Glaring to the reader.

That’s just for starters.

The developmental editor

This could be the writer, though most often it’s not. Their interest is the bigger picture. The plot from A to Z; does it all make sense? Have you relied on God to provide some solutions? Does it all fizzle out at the end, cos the entire story was just a fabulation spewed out from your head? Does anyone actually learn anything from the events as you’ve written them – the readers, the characters, especially the protagonist?

How about conflict and tension? You don’t need a war to have that. Relationships provide ample. So too might the geographical location.

Satisfying all the issues highlighted by the developmental editor might involve a total rewrite, regardless of whether you’re a plotter or a panzer. Pointless to move on to the next type of edit until you’ve fixed those holes.

Enter the line editor

This is the one I love to play! Fixing the style and the flow. Reading it, reading it, reading it, fixing it, fixing it, fixing it. A different word here, cut those words there. Delete that entire sentence. Ffs, get rid of the -ings, too many participles make for heavy weather.

Read Aloud apps: the line editor’s favourite tool. Certainly mine.

Not finished yet? But what’s left to fix? You sure you’re not procrastinating?

Copy editing

Yep, cos you can put money on it that somewhere in your 200k script there’s at least twenty grammatical mistakes. At least.

Moreover, in Chapter One granny’s name is Ethel. Yet when she appears in Chapter Eleven she’s become Beth. The protagonist has aged 7 years in less than 7 months. Well, she’s having a hard time of it.

And then there’s the matter of: –, —, :, ; etc. And was that the best place to start a new chapter, scene, paragraph, sentence?

So now we’re all done? Perfect?

No.

One last edit.

Proofreading

That final error check to ensure the perfect script. Polished. Professional. If it’s to rejected, it won’t be for lack of editing.

And that’s why I’m still editing Saramequai. And the lack of that edit is the reason I withdrew it (as Alsalda) from Amazon. It takes time, lots of time, and it cannot be rushed.

Though I do admit, I do love to edit. All stages of it.