Editing Takes Time

I did manage to spend a couple hours editing last night. It included the joy of taking all the red marks on my hardcopy and putting them into the computer. I also had to break down my chapters into new files, since most of the chapters were too long. The original manuscript was single spaced which really isn't good for editing nor is it the format publishers want it in for submission.

After two hours, the first two old chapters were done and printed out as the four chapters it turned into. These first few chapters of my book were the easiest due to the least amount of editing. The big edits start in chapter 5 of the old manuscript, so I honestly can't say how many hours I'll log for NaNoEdMo for acquiring a clean and properly formatted copy.

Once I have that all organized, I have the fun of doing one more big edit. This edit includes more dispersion of the information leading up to the finale of the novel. Some is dispersed, but not enough. The ending is more like an info dump even if it reveals an interesting twist. I want to lead up to the twist while leaving it a mystery. This will prove an interesting editing phase.

Then I do the knit-picky editing of wording to polish it up. I have a tendancy, as many do, of throwing in extra words like 'that', 'really', etc. Good ole passive voice loves to rear its head when active voice would give far more punch. When you work as an engineer writing technical documents all day that use passive voice, it gets rather entertaining reading a manuscript to find you couldn't leave ole passive voice at work.

This novel will turn into something publishable soon enough, but some days it needs to come after my writing homework assignments. Or some short item comes up wanting attention like an inspirational article I did print all the critiques for when I do sit down to polish it.

Now to head out so I can work on some of this for the evening.