A friend who’s a first time author hit me up the other day because she’s been deep in the shits with edits for weeks and couldn’t see her way out. Man, that resonated. Everyone has a least favorite part of the writing process, and for me its edits. They drive me up the wall, and I’ve spent a lot of time plotting out ways to make the editing process less horrific. Even if editing is your favorite part, and I know a lot of writers love it so much more than the actual writing part, it’s still challenging and can feel like it’s going on forever (because it is! Yarrrg!!). Here are some notes on how to make it through.
First of, let me clarify: generally you will get global edits, also known as developmental edits, first. These are the big changes — whole chapters removed, whole sections switched around. They’re tricky in their own way, but process-wise, they’re likely to bring you back to the brainstorming, crafting stage of the work. This doesn’t mean you’re starting from scratch, but you’re reconfiguring concepts and ideas and big picture movements throughout the story, not minutia.
This post focuses mostly on the next stage of edits, after the large stuff is handled: the line edit. DUN DUN DUNNNN. (After that comes copy edits, sometimes several rounds but it at least means you’re almost there!)
Let’s jump in!
The Two Parts of Your Creative Mind
Probably there are way more than two, but for editing purposes, there’s a play of opposites that it’s important to be aware of. When we write, we are creating. Ideas and plot points to words, words on the page, boom boom boom. Editing, in contrast, is often a process of destruction. (Yes, some people edit up, as in have a higher word count at the end of the process, but that’s usually something that happens in global edits, not line edits.) You’re chopping away at the prose to trim away the unnecessary parts and get to the heart of the sentence. Even if you’re just moving things around, it’s not the same as the process of creation. In fact, in ways, it’s the opposite.
And that’s fine — the issue is, in any line editing process, there are moments when writing is called for. And that, I find, is often where the trouble happens. There you are happily jumping from note to note, adjusting, chopping, accepting, STETing, whatever, pages are flying by, you’ve hit your stride, and then suddenly ka-blam, the editor requests clarification on a thing and you sit there staring at the page like a goober for hours. When you’re writing the book, it would’ve taken you ten minutes to write this lil bit of a thing, but now, it’s got you stumped.
That’s because you’re brain is in edits mode. It’s doing one thing, and suddenly you’re asking it to do another. Not just another, one that’s at the polar opposite end of the creative process. So like Jyn Erso in the cut scene of Rogue One, it rebels.
For me, this has meant that it’s super important to acknowledge this dynamic and honor it with the process. When I’m editing, as in going through notes, making small, sentence-level changes, I just do that. When I hit a comment that asks for more than a line or two of writing, I make a note of it, usually in a separate doc, and keep it moving. When I’m done the edit run, I come back (after a break!) and address the parts that required actual writing. This alone has totally transformed the process for the better, mostly because it stopped me from being at war with my own creativity in the middle of a long journey.
Open as a New Doc
Seems small, but it’s the small things that matter most sometimes. Editing demands a certain playfulness of us. We can’t be precious — it’ll jam up our flow, make everything take longer and feel more grueling. To get to that playful place, the simple act of hitting “SAVE AS” when you first start out can be THE catalyst. Even if you have the original draft saved and you’re working from the draft the editor sent you with all the dashes and initials in the doc title — it still matters that that version is left alone and you save it as a new document and work from that.
That way, in the back of your mind, you know both the original original and the edited original are still readily available, easily findable, etc, and you can feel free to play at will on the new one. This method works across the board, I’ve found. Even at the notes/brainstorming stage, I’ll copy and paste an initial outline or thought dump into another section of the notes doc and work from that. It can feel clunky at first but ultimately allows for a more nimble, loose approach to creativity.
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