Editing Magic

First Try Perfection © Mihail Orlov

First Try Perfection © Mihail Orlov

If only I could spin a perfect yarn as quickly and efficiently as Miss Spider spins her web. Now don’t get me wrong. I can crank out a few thousand words a day just like any other red-blooded writer. Maybe not as many as Rachel Aaron. I still have my day job. But on a good Saturday when The Spouse takes on chauffeur duty and I’m left with My Muse, a cup of tea, and a quiet house, I can hit 3,500- 5,000 words easy.

Mr. Kitty, Writing Muse

Mr. Kitty, Writing Muse

Quantity is easy. Quality is hard work.

One of my recent editing endeavors involved rewriting a Young Adult Sci-Fantasy novel from third-person past point-of-view to first-person present and back again. I honestly don’t know which version I like better now, but I can tell you the “new” third-person version is far more intimate and thoughtful simply from going through the process. So painstakingly, for the last few months, I’ve taken a Middle-Grade Dystopian that I wrote a couple years back and I have edited and re-edited, written, revised, and re-written, gutted and reassembled, stacked, unstacked, and re-stacked, until this,

The mess before the magic

The mess before the magic

Became this,

The middle is looking a little light.

The middle is looking a little light.

Became this.

The beauty of organization.

The beauty of organization.

First try perfection is definitely not my thing. Revising and editing? That’s when the magic happens. Now enough writing about editing. Time to get the job done.

 

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