Self-Editing - Howto

[WriteNowDave he/him]

Hi all,

 

I have listened to all of your pod-casts over the past year; I started late but have since caught up, and have one question that I feel has not been addressed. Now I could be wrong, and will accept however large piece of humble pie if it is delivered, but I want to know more about self-editing.

 

Now to further explain my situation; I work full time, I have young kids, and home responsibilities, all of which eats up most of my free time. Even then I still manage to get an average of 1,000 words a day typed in to whatever I'm working on at the time. Most of my writing is done on a chrome-book, which I use on my light-rail ride to and from work, over my lunches, and when its slow at work. By the time the kids are in bed and my but finally hits the couch most of motivation has evaporated and all I want to do is surf the web and watch Justin Bieber videos. 

 

So that being said, space and time are limited in my life. I have searched Amazon.com for books on editing but so far nothing has tickled my muse about how to best go about dissecting my drivel to find the possible gems beneath. Can you talk about self-editing please.

 

I have gone so far as to join two meetup.com writers groups in my local area but they don't seem all that productive or motivated. 

 

As of right now I have a 200,000 word first draft fantasy book done, a 60,000 word sci-fi book done, and am now 20,000 words into another sci-fi novel. I don't want to get stuck in first draft purgatory and would like to see some of my work mature as I know it (hopefully) can.

 

Thank you,

 

Dave

 

[Delightful]

Hi Dave,

I just want to point out, I don't think the WE crew frequent the forum, this is more of a fan base area (albeit a rather quiet one)

There have been quite a few episodes on editing over the seasons, especially ones on plotting, character arcs etc. I haven't done a ton of editing myself, but basically, go back and read what you want to edit and see what glaring holes you can spot. (Read through once you've left it for a while so the story will be fresh in your head and you'll notice inconsistencies etc that you were blind to as you wrote it). Then see what you can do to fix the problems, leave it, read it again, see what else you could fix.

You could also email them and request the topic, or look out for Brandon taking requests on twitter or facebook.

[Chuck Hossenlopp]

Yeah. Editing. It's hard for me to stay motivated. And it's not like you can have a word count goal. I'm actually trying to kill some words since my word count is getting a little high. So I did a search. Here's our homework:

 

Writing Excuses 8.46: Editing with Aeryn Rudel

Writing Excuses 4.31: Line Editing Dialog

Writing Excuses 9.12: Microcasting! Twice in a row!

Writing Excuses 9.33: Microcasting

 

Let's see if those are good medicine.