Well, I got my edit notes the other day and I was happy to see they weren't as bad as I'd feared :) I actually really enjoy revising. Major rewrites can be stressful (I'm in the middle of that for my current WIP) but just regular old revisions....love 'em :)
Maybe because they are less about getting the story out and more about polishing the story. I've got something to work with and I just need to go layer by layer to make sure everything is as it should be.
Right now I'm working on the little stuff - the line edits and minor tweaks. This is often something I'll save for the end, however I need to pare down the word count a bit, so I want all the new stuff in there so I can see exactly how much I need to cut.
So, little stuff up first. Then the big edit I need do do (some tweakage on the setting and background). And then...time to murder my darling a little bit and trim some wordage :) I think I've actually gotten pretty good at this. Oh, there are a few scenes I'd fight to the death to keep. But then again, those scenes are scenes that work well in the story, scenes that I made SURE worked well :)
For everything else...well, I've gotten good at loping anything from words to massive chunks of manuscript. I save it all in a file, just in case :) but it doesn't bother me so much anymore.
How do you edit? Do you go through the manuscript and do it all at once as you come to places that need work? Or do you do things one at a time (going through the ms with one edit in mind and changing everything pertaining to that particular edit before moving on to another one)? Is it hard for you to cut things?
1 comment:
I love revision time because that means I have a finished manuscript. :P It's funny how much I think I hate revising until I actually start doing it.
I revise a little as I draft, so once I've got a complete draft that's had some time to settle, I do a quick read-through for plot holes and glaring errors. Then I usually send it off to betas and see what they say.
At that point, depending on the comments I get, I'll do my major scene changes and adding and eliminating passages. Basically, I'll repeat these three steps until I'm ready to submit, but I almost always like to get my big changes done as soon as possible.
Good luck with your editing!
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