lauraanne_gilman (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lauraanne_gilman) wrote2008-10-04 08:18 am
lauraanne_gilman) wrote2008-10-04 08:18 am
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Yea though I walk through the valley of revisions, I shall fear no edit...
And lo there was rejoicing, for Staples did deliver, and there was printer paper in the households once again. So today I will be printing out the entire manuscript of Vineart War #1 and settling down with caffeine and red pen (the only time I ever use red pen) to open up a serious can of editorial whup-ass on myself.
Editing is a funny business. I just finished a freelance line-edit where mostly I was smoothing out sentence fragments and correcting some...unfortunate word choices. But I also ended up catching a number of continuity errors and plot-support failures that should have been found in the first round of (developmental/revision) edits. That's what the editor does -- catches the things that the author's too close-up [and tired] to see.
So how can the writer also be editor? Very, very carefully, and with a few tricks on the brain, said tricks differing from person to person.
Some people, I know, can self-edit on the screen. Not me. It may be wasteful of paper, but I need hard-copy. Part of this process comes from all the years editing other peoples' work, I suppose: by turning the book into a manuscript, separating it that way from the thing-I-created, I am able to become Editor rather than Writer, and make judgments based on the presentation on the page rather than what I-the-Writer had in my head. Also, it give me my first sense of how scenes and chapters actually flow, turning pages, rather than scrolling down. There really is a difference.
So that's where I'll be. Except when I'm not.
So how do y'all edit your own work? Or do you have to hand it over to someone else? [I do some of that, too: blessed be the beta reader]
Editing is a funny business. I just finished a freelance line-edit where mostly I was smoothing out sentence fragments and correcting some...unfortunate word choices. But I also ended up catching a number of continuity errors and plot-support failures that should have been found in the first round of (developmental/revision) edits. That's what the editor does -- catches the things that the author's too close-up [and tired] to see.
So how can the writer also be editor? Very, very carefully, and with a few tricks on the brain, said tricks differing from person to person.
Some people, I know, can self-edit on the screen. Not me. It may be wasteful of paper, but I need hard-copy. Part of this process comes from all the years editing other peoples' work, I suppose: by turning the book into a manuscript, separating it that way from the thing-I-created, I am able to become Editor rather than Writer, and make judgments based on the presentation on the page rather than what I-the-Writer had in my head. Also, it give me my first sense of how scenes and chapters actually flow, turning pages, rather than scrolling down. There really is a difference.
So that's where I'll be. Except when I'm not.
So how do y'all edit your own work? Or do you have to hand it over to someone else? [I do some of that, too: blessed be the beta reader]