Opening and closing question marks (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Still have the cold but it’s getting better. I wanted to talk a bit about the process I use for editing. I’m still working on tweaking it some.
Writing – my favorite part.
Edit 1 – when I write the first draft, I write as fast as I can. If I don’t know a specific detail – I’ll put a couple of question marks in the document and move on. The first pass I do figures out what the question marks are.
Edit 2 – working on tweaking and tuning. Removing any obvious misspellings. If there are any parts that are difficult to read, I work on tweaking those.
Edit 3 – Done by my editor. This stage mostly looks at the overall work. She gives me a list of things I may need to add to (or take away from). Content Editing
Edit 4 – I work on changing things based on my editors input.
Edit 5 – the Line Edits – again by the editor.
Edit 6 – tweaks done
Edit 7 – Final Proofing by my editor.
Edit 8 – tweaks done and final pass.
Format / Cover / Testing and loading.
I’m still working out how to best do everything. The good thing is with each edits the red marks on my pages get less and less, until the final proofing which usually only has a few minor changes.
Hope your week is going well. Been a busy time around here.
Book 1 – has finished the second round of edits. I’m now working on it, getting ready to send it back to the editor for the final round. I’m starting to get a bit excited. I know I had mentioned it may be published in May, don’t think that is going to happen.
Book 2 – I finished my first round of edits – now it goes to the editor.
Book 4 – almost done. I’m at the climax / ending. It’s according to how much the characters play around at the end. They’ve already side tracked me a couple of times, so maybe done this week or not. Right now it’s at 83k words. The goal I think is 90k. We’ll see how much I get to close to it or not. The good thing about having that many words is you can always remove stuff you don’t like.
Editing –
I need to come up with a better process. I’m not sure how I’m going to do it. I realize it’s an important part of getting the work out there but I do wish it could be sped up a bit. The goal of course is to have one of my books coming out every month. If it takes more than a month to edit each one, then it’s not going to happen. I need to streamline some things or something. I need to ponder on it some.
I think I have the getting the words down pretty good. Most of the time I can get 3500+ words in a couple of hours, unless I have a whole lot of distractions. Sometimes I’ve been able to do it in an hour and half, sometimes it will take me three hours. I’m also figuring out when my most productive writing time is.
English: A stack of copy paper. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Hope you’re doing well. It’s been a busy time around here, but busy is good. I got my first edit back from book 1 on Friday. I went over the reviews and sent them back. I have two more edits to go. The goal is to get it published this month… hopefully that will work out. I did find out some pretty cool editing notes, I’ll share with you below. I’ve also been hard at work on book 4. I’m about 60,000 words in it. That should be done this month. I also finished the first bit of editing on book 2. Are you confused yet. Here’s what I do.
Write the book – when I write, I go full tilt. If I don’t know something I just highlight it and put a whole bunch of ?? in the text. I read it and clear up the ?? this is my first run through. I then run through it again and correct grammar mistakes, and make sure the hero doesn’t have a burr cut on page one, and long blond locks at the end. I then send it to the editor. She checks it mostly for errors in the framework of the story, and let’s me know if I missed anything that I should have put there. She sends it back to me, I make edits and then it goes back for the final line edits.
Some people after they write, they then only work on editing. I don’t do that. I’m not sure exactly why I don’t maybe I’m afraid my story will go away. So while I’m doing any of the above I will make sure I write my 3500 words a day (at least). I want to write a novel every month, and I’ve told you before I want to write a million words this year. A lofty goal I know, but if you break it down into x number of words a day, it’s not so bad.
It’s not like it’s a chore either, I really love to write, I can usually write the 3500 words in a couple of hours. Speaking of words and to keep me honest, here are the word counts since we talked last.
Here were some edit notes I got from my editor – hopefully you can use these tips as well.
Ok, capital letters regarding Mom/Dad etc.
If it is a proper noun, it needs capital letters. If it’s not, it doesn’t. The best way I saw someone explain when to use them and when to not is to substitute the name (Mom/Dad) for a Christian name, eg. Mel/Don
Eg. ‘He had spent the night with his Don’ – this doesn’t make sense, so it shouldn’t be capital letters.
‘He had spent the night with Don’ does make sense so this would be a capital for Grandpa.
So there you have it, a real easy way to tell when to capitalize Dad and Mom.
