Happy couple-of-days-after-Valentine's-Day! Now that I've shared with you my wealth of knowledge concerning romance writing, I thought we could briefly cover a different, less romantic subject: editing.
See, I am now convinced that the best way to edit your book is to first write a completely different book.
I've heard this advice before, and like I am with all difficult-sounding writing things, I was skeptical at first. I already had a manuscript series I was working on, and doesn't that count as multiple books already? But then I got wrapped up in NaNoWriMo and ended up finishing a new and wholly original story, and I have since set it aside to ferment before I go back in for those second-draft edits. I just hope that manuscript ferments more like beer and less like mold, that's all I can say.
I can't stop writing while that's going on, though, and I don't count all the writing I have to do as a journalist*. Therefore, I decided to go back and edit the second book of a trilogy-ish thing I wrote. Second books are like the middle children of a book series; we know they're there, but I think we don't expect too much of them, and as long as they aren't causing any trouble, we leave them alone.
How are those edits going, you ask?
Let me put it this way: I think the book had about 69,000 words when I first re-opened it. Now it's pushing 74,000. When I had to write the completely original NaNoWriMo book, I needed to describe a whole new world from scratch, something I hadn't done in a while. Thanks to all the writing and critical reading I'd done since I became a writer, I had plenty of experience to make that happen.
Then I noticed my second-book-in-the-series needed a serious descriptive overhaul, amongst its many other edit-able details. I realize this inflating word count sort of flies in the face of Stephen King's "On Writing" book--he advises cutting back on words whenever possible--but I don't mind yet. I think of it as similar to building a snowman: if the snowman is too small, you need to pack more snow on it before making it more smooth and compact.
There you have it; that's why I recommend writing something completely different before editing a manuscript. If nothing else...well, you have my opinion on snowman-building.
Bye for now.
*Final side note: OK, I do count the editorials I write as legit ("fun") writing. That's right--my newspaper gave me my own editorial column. Maybe I'll tell you about it someday, but in the meantime, know that it keeps our readership VERY entertained.
