The are a few phases of an edit for me, when I’m editing my own work. The first one is to just sit and think about any major changes or developments that I want to make with the work. 

These are just some of the questions I ask and make notes on before I start editing the manuscript again. A lot of the time I think of “editing” as just red pen to paper and forget that there’s so much more to the process than just taking notes or correcting spelling and grammar. Usually the first two or three times of editing, I’m preoccupied with just that pen-to-paper editing. I’ve started to narrow this down to stop me from completing a whole lotta work that I’m going to just undo and to prevent myself from burning out on reading that particular story. These days, I think much more about editing in terms of refining plot and people. I also try to take a break between edits to give myself enough time to work on the questions poised from the previous edit (p_-)

With Rini & Butler, I have probably edited it four or five times before the current time. This is because the first few edits were for a scene submission to university and I was trying to keep the novel under a word restriction for an upcoming competition. It has been about two years since the last edit and the notes I’ve made on the changes I want to apply to the novel have me excited. The more I grow, the better my writing develops, and so I get to apply any growth I’ve experienced in the last to years to this new edit ୧(๑•̀ヮ•́)૭

Things I have done before sitting down to pen-to-paper edit:

• Refinement of character and character notes and sketches to add the development of the character
• Scene sketches that I want to include to build on the characters, setting and plot
• Questions that I would ask as a reader to address, or just questions about aspects I would like to have answers provided for
• Research that I need to improve the realism of aspects
• Shuffling of chapters. During the overhaul, points of climax have been adjusted, with the timeline being rearranged, and I had to detail what was being moved to where and the justifications for it so I didn’t confuse myself later
• Plot hole consideration: does everything make sense, and if it doesn’t, is there an appropriate justification for why? 

Once I’ve made good head way on those preparations, I would start on the direct manuscript edit. This one took a lot longer to get around to (probably some writer fears combined with my memory/focus issues) but I have finally put pen-to-paper ＿〆(。。)

Whilst editing, I not only consider all the above preparation but I’m making notes all of the time. I’m adding to the questions list, adding to the scenes list for the re-write and because it’s to paper, I’m doing something new. I’m not tackling everything as it comes. Normally I would try and fix all raised issues as they appear, whether this is re-writing something or adding something, but in the past that has slowed me down or made me stuck. With my skill in being able to recognise where I’m having an issue with progressing and step away from it strengthening, this has gotten so much easier to address. I make a mark that there’s something that needs to address in the area and scribble down what notes come to mind, but if my brain doesn’t want to fix it straight away, I don’t. I just move on ʅ ( ․ ⤙ ․) ʃ

I try to catch as many thoughts as I can as they pass through, but put less pressure on myself to wait until they form correctly. Sometimes the words just back up in my mind and I can’t think of a “proper” way to express them, and so I eventually just don’t. My brain either stalls or the frustration builds and I get upset with myself. Now, I let the words go onto the paper like dot-points and it frees up my mind to keep working on the manuscript. Although I wish I didn’t have a lot of problems with how I think and behave, it’s still amazing that I can now recognise those problems and work on bettering how I respond to them. It doesn’t work all of the time, but it’s definitely better than when I can’t move forward at all.

Things that I take note of if I don’t take care of it immediately:

• Any character related questions:
  • Have they been built consistently? 
  • Are there habits that I gave them that I didn’t realise and need to jot down so I don’t forget about them later (this is unfortunately an issue I’ve had when leaving a work aside for so long)?
  • Is there actual development in their behaviour?
  • Are adjustments needed to make their development more realistic?
  • How are they behaving towards the other characters?
• Plot holes?
  • Are there plot-holes and what’s the severity?
  • How can they be plugged up, or how can we rework around it?
• Doesn’t vibe: sometimes the way I’ve phrased something doesn’t read smoothly when I’m editing. It’s something I pick up kind of unconsciously and will always make a note of, it’s like my brain snags. I re-read the section two or three times, and if my brain continues to snag, then it needs to be changed.
  • When I’m editing work for others, usually a re-read of the line presents a different tone or emphasis that runs the sentence smoothly and then I don’t worry about it, but if it continues to snag my reading, I’ll spend a few minutes on trying to find out why so I can justify raising it as a potential edit.
    • It’s only while writing this that I realise this is literally how it goes down when I’m reading. My mind snags and I can’t get through the sentence properly haha
• Where does realism need to be improved?
  • Rini & Butler involves robots and androids and I actually don’t know much other than surface level knowledge. Because of the nature of the story, I don’t need to know the ins-and-outs and so haven’t done a lot of research, but I can see through my reading that it would be beneficial that I know more about how they operate
    • The issue with this particular knowledge area is that there’s a delicate balance between “vague enough to get away with it” and “enough knowledge employed that you can tell not a lot is known about the topic”. If I try to add too much to the realism, I might make it even more unrealistic … if that makes sense and isn’t just me overthinking.
      • Changing “if that makes sense” to “is this me overthinking”
• What can’t the readers see?
  • Sometimes I get too close to the work that it isn’t until after I manage to get someone to read it, or I’ve spent a while away from it and can look at it more objectively, that I realise that description in my mind is not actually conveyed in the story
    • In Rini & Butler I’ve noticed a lack of description around anything other than Rini, Butler or the sky. I’ve somehow managed to keep the canvas of the world in my head, forgetting to put it on the paper. Which is a bit strange considering that I normally pay a lot of attention to the surroundings in my work. It might have been due to the word limit I was imposing but I just can’t stop going “ew” about the writing where there’s a blatant lack of any description (⑉¬₀¬⑉)

After the above two happen, there’s basically another bout of the first phase where I go through everything major that I’ve changed and think more on whether I’ve solved all the problems or have created others in different places. If I haven’t edited directly onto the document, then I begin a document edit where I apply the edits and add in anything new I need to. I also do a little bit of the above (it’s impossible to separate the phases really, unless I have been asked to complete only a line-edit for someone else).

Now this is the part where I’m supposed to hand it over to someone to read for me. My anxiety always wins out and what happens is “it’s not good enough, let’s do another edit” and either I do another edit that stalls me into not wanting to work on it anymore or I just don’t do the edit and it moves to the back of my mind. This time around, I’m hoping to find the courage to throw it at people. Not literally, and I don’t want to be pushy, but I need to get better at actually asking someone to read it.

And we’ll see how I go (๑>◡<๑)