The editing process, for me, has never been my strong suit. I get itchy during it, like I’ve been sitting still for weeks or months without any movement. It becomes problem solving and while math has always been a fun diversion for me, it gives me a headache after awhile.
The Medusa Coin was no different, yet completely different than both Signs of Portents and Tales from Portents during the editing process. It showed me quite a bit about the way I work and how I work best when it comes to a larger manuscript.
Editing process lessons learned (hopefully)…
Better time management. The Medusa Coin is an 85,000 word BEHEMOTH. Unlike the short stories in Tales, this one required quite a bit of reading to get a handle on the problems within. Reading takes time and it seemed to be in short supply for me over the last two months. To better serve the editing process and future books I need to focus on the following:
- Lighter scheduling. While editing The Medusa Coin I had to finalize Tales from Portents, I scheduled my first promotion for Signs of Portents and I outlined Pathways in the Dark. Oh yeah, and worked on this blog. RIDICULOUS. Why would I do that? Because I am an idiot. Dividing up my sparse amount of work time between all of these projects made the first month of edits a nightmare. Won’t happen again.
- Speaking of sparse time available…(I miss you naps.) My plan going forward is to center the bulk of my editing around long weekends, holidays (THANK YOU, FEBRUARY BREAK!) and summer vacation. Having larger chunks of time made the first draft possible and it remains true for every other step in the process as well.
- Putting everything else on autopilot. Batching blogs. Setting up promos in advance. All of that should be done to keep the focus on the editing process. January fell apart on me because my head was everywhere else and The Medusa Coin ended up at the bottom of the priority list.
- Research ahead of time! A no-brainer yet I kept pushing it back. Made for way too much double work.
Editing process management
It took me an entire month of reading through the book, highlighting questions and problem areas before I realized I needed a better system. Since the end of January things have gone much smoother thanks to changes I made by tackling specific issues:
- By arc or character – Following a single thread throughout the book put a laser focus on one aspect of the book and allowed me to work it into the larger narrative more easily by finding natural connections throughout.
- By event or action sequence – After each individual arc was set, going through the major events or action pieces of the narrative was my next step. A little wider in scope but still narrow enough to make sure all of the right elements were in place – building the entire work up brick by brick.
Light at the end of the tunnel
I am making my final pass on The Medusa Coin this week. Final pass is a misnomer since I will be reading it about ten times after this, but it is the last major reworking of the text before sending it to my group of first readers. I’m incredibly nervous. This story has been with me a long time.
Fingers crossed it came through in the telling.
Thanks for reading.
