How do I learn to enjoy the editing process?
Ask the Author Podcast Transcript
Episode 32, 4th December 2023
Do you hate editing your novel? Jodi Gibson, author of REINVENTING EMILY BROWN shares her top tips on how to get through this process.
Intro
In the intro, Jodi Gibson shares her NaNoWriMo results (40,000 words!) and acknowledges that even though that’s not the 50,000 word total, it’s still half a novel and a great result!
Show Notes
- Tip 1: Editing is hard
- Tip 2: Understand why editing is necessary
- Tip 3: Get some help
Episode Transcript
This week's question comes from someone who'd like to stay anonymous, which is perfectly fine, and this is the question.
I'm an unpublished writer at this stage, but I have written and edited three manuscripts, none of which have been picked up by an agent yet. I love writing the first draft. I'm not a planner, so it usually pulls out of me. However, I always find I procrastinate and put off the rewrites and editing. I absolutely loathe the developmental editing process. I always find it extremely difficult and at times wonder if I should even be writing. My question is how do I learn to enjoy the editing process? I hope you can give me some magic tips.
I don't know if I can offer tips that are magically going to make you love the editing process, but I can offer you some advice to learn to maybe not even enjoy, but learn to push through the editing process.
Tip 1: Editing is hard
Editing is hard. If it were easy, everyone would be churning out book after book with ease. It's okay to find the process daunting, overwhelming, frustrating or even terrifying, because it is. I think the only ones who truly love the editing process are editors, because they choose to do it as a job, and it's a job they do really, really well. So my first piece of advice is acknowledge the fact that it's hard, that it's super challenging and, in fact, that most people hate it. So once you acknowledge that fact, you can take a breath and move forward.
Tip 2: Understand why editing is necessary
Every book has to undergo the editorial process. Every author has to go through the structural or developmental edit, and many times at that, and we know it has to be done. But understanding the why is also important. Editing is important because it makes your book the best it can be.
Readers expect, when they pick up a book, that it's going to hook them and engage them. They expect characters that they can either love or hate, but ultimately, either way, they want to follow their journey throughout the book. They want to make sure their reading experience makes sense, for things to happen for a reason and in an orderly fashion. The reader wants the tension to ramp up at certain points and reach an exciting, thrilling or beautiful conclusion, and they want an ending that suits the story and is therefore satisfying. The way, as authors, that we get to provide readers with books like this is through the editing process.
So, as an author, you want to produce the best book that you can write. You want readers to pick it up and struggle to put it down and you want to make it an easy read. And this only happens through multiple rounds of editing and each time you edit, each time you go through that process, the book gets better and better. So you don't have to learn to love the editing process, but you do have to learn to push your way through it, knowing that it's making your book the best it can be mentally. Just even knowing that can make the process a little bit easier.
I'm sure you understand how important having your book edited and rewritten and working through that process, how important that is. So, again, acknowledge that, understand why you're doing it and just know that by the end of it your book is going to be better.
Tip 3: Get some help
Not all writers are great at editing and you don't have to be a great editor to be a great author. That's why we have editors. But it's important to know when to seek help from an editor or, say, a manuscript assessment agency. My advice is to work through the drafts of your novel until you feel you can't add anything further to it. Until you've done all you can.
You do have to put in the hard yards of redrafting a few times. How many will, of course, depend on the shape of your first and second drafts and you need to be at a point where you feel you've done all you can do. You might think it's okay, which is great, and on the other hand, you might know deep down your guts telling you their problems, but you may not be able to pinpoint what they are, and that's totally okay. And this is the point when you need an editor.
I will do an episode down the track on how to self edit your work, because it's very important to be able to go through that process yourself and do the best you can up until that point, before you send it off for another person to look through. It's a skill that every writer needs to have, but for now I'll just say think about the main structure of your novel.
When you're reading your draft and you're about to tackle the rewriting or editing process, you're looking for the inciting incident, the plot point that results from the inciting incident. You're looking for a midpoint of your story where things go left or right, where a big decision or turnaround has to be made, the next turning point of the story when things are looking really bad for your protagonist, and then, of course, the tension leading up to the climax, when it all comes to a head, and then the resolution which brings everything together at the end. So if you can focus on those main points of your story, that's a great way to start looking through your manuscript to make sure that you're hitting these points and how you can fix things in the lead up to each of those points. Now remember, once you have redrafted a few times, it's okay to feel like it's still not great, and editor is the experience to help point out what is and what isn't working and offer suggestions on how to fix it. And everything is fixable.
Now, if you can't afford to hire a freelance editor, you can look for, say, a manuscript assessment service which offers a more broader type of feedback. It probably won't be as specific, but it will still help you get the big picture of your novel working. And if that's also out of your budget and I understand it can be costly and not everyone can afford to engage someone and pay someone to look at their manuscript my next, next suggestion would be other experienced authors not your mom, not your brother, even those in your writing group, unless you feel they had the necessary experience, but someone who understands the structure of novels and what makes them work, and someone you feel you can get advice from, that is trustworthy and just help you through the process.
So that might take a little bit of working out who can actually help you the best, but if you can't afford to engage someone to help you professionally, that would be the next step. My last point is to take on board the feedback from your editor or from whoever has looked through your manuscript. As I said, the editor is skilled at knowing how to get the structure of your novel right and while you don't have to take on every bit of advice and every suggestion that they make, it is important to make sure that you're taking notice of the big picture things that will help make your story work.
And remember it's really easy to feel overwhelmed when you receive your editorial feedback. Give yourself a day or two or even a week just to sit with it. Feel all the emotions, because you will feel them overwhelm, grief, feelings of hopelessness that you aren't a writer. It'll all be there. So take a deep breath, take some time and then come back and go through the report again with fresh eyes and a resolve that you can do it. Because you can do it. It's hard, it's challenging, it's overwhelming, but you can do it, one bite of the apple at a time.
In Summary
As they say, editing your work is the longest part of writing a book. It's the most taxing, but also the most rewarding, and there's nothing like finishing a draft of a book. Once you've gone through all that editing and looking back to see how far you've come, you've written a book, yay. You've taken the seed of an idea, written thousands of words and wrangled them into a story that makes sense. Editing is worth the hard work. Your book and your readers will thank you for it.