Evil? you think. Aren’t you being a bit dramatic? you think. At least, I think that’s what you’re thinking. It’s what I would have thought before going through the editing process myself.
Maybe I am being dramatic. Maybe not. If you’re writing to get published, you’ll find out.
I say evil because editing hurts. It can tear at our already fragile self-esteem. It can be soul crushing. And if done by the wrong person or taken the wrong way, it can turn you off writing for good. At least for public consumption. I’ve heard you build callouses to it after awhile, hopefully that happens before the liver gives up the ghost.
Keeping in mind that editing is crucial to our writing development and our futures as authors helps. A little. I’ve been through three rounds of editing on Mermaid, the book I hope to publish soon, and here’s how it went.
I had just finished Mermaid and was coming out of my seat with excitement. I had done it. I had freaking done it! Finished an entire novel. Not a short story, not a novella. A Novel. Now, what the hell do I do with it?
Three minutes of searching the internet revealed the answer. Editing. I’m pretty sure if the internet could have reached through the screen, smacked me on the forehead and said duh, it would have. Anyway, on to editing.
For this first round, I had an acquaintance with some literary experience read my book. I was looking for feedback on both content and grammar. I handed my baby over brimming with pride and confidence. I went to bed smug that night, and several nights after, sure that there was nothing for her to do but enjoy a good read. I’d spent a year on the book, it was perfect. Ha.
A month later, she sent it back with more red ink than my bank statement. She was kind about it, but she was honest. And those two walk uncomfortably hand in hand. The number one issue: my grammar was terrible. Lots of random commas, quotation marks in the wrong places, semi-colons in dialogue, you name it, I’d done it.
The content, she said, was good, only needed a few tweaks here and there. The grammar, she said, just needed some time and attention. I went to bed devastated, that my heart didn’t bleed all over the kitchen is still a miracle to me. It didn’t matter how kind she’d been. It didn’t matter that my first novel having mostly grammatical errors, no major plot holes, no terrible characters, the structure was solid, was a big win. It didn’t matter that she’d said she liked it. All I gleaned from those weeping red pages was that I was a failure.
The next morning, eyes puffy from a newly developed allergy to criticism, I made a decision. My acquaintance was willing to read Mermaid again after corrections and I planned to take her up on that. I got to work, and let me tell you, all that red ink was justified. Wow, was re-reading my book an eye opener! It was so riddled with issues, it was hard for even me to read. Having its flaws pointed out was like flushing my rose colored glasses down the toilet. In hindsight, the fact that my friend (yes, officially in the friend zone after all that) got through the whole manuscript is amazing. It stunk so bad, how she read it without a gas mask and tongs, I’ll never know.
We went through the manuscript chapter by chapter. I’d fix one, send it to her, she’d edit it again and send it back with additional changes and on it went. Through thirty-six chapters. And with each chapter, something in me changed. I didn’t regain that earlier oh so cocky confidence, but I grew determined. Determined to make this book as good as I possibly could, determined to publish it regardless of the nay-sayers. I was like a two-year-old, I was going to put these damn shoes on myself or we weren’t going anywhere. Four months later, we’d went through the entire manuscript again and I was once again on my own. Time to look for an agent or self-publish it, right? Not quite, I still had a long way to go.
To be continued . . .
Coming up, round two of editing and how my rum bill skyrocketed.