Tag Archives: line by line editing

Rainbows, Wind Chimes and Editing

Rainbow over the lake

During the creative process of writing the fourth novel in the Crater Lake series – No Compass to Right – I found that reflections to share on this blog tripped from my fingertips to the keys of my laptop on a regular basis. Line-by-line editing was definitely a different kind of beast. Though easily one of the most important parts of the process required to bring a finished manuscript to fruition, I’d be lying if I didn’t come clean about the amount of work involved. Editing does not leave room to think about anything else.

Deconstruction versus construction – no wonder editing is difficult. There is an excitement that buoys the work of creating pages and pages from nothing but the thoughts in my head. Sitting down to take that creation apart line-by-line does not carry the same euphoric glow.

At the same time, editing is satisfying in the way that polishing a piece of silver to glowing perfection is satisfying or standing back to admire a well-hung clothesline flapping in the breeze is satisfying. Examining the words and ideas that make up my novel, sentence-by-sentence, with the aim of scraping away all that is superfluous so that the prose snaps with meaning, that is a exhilarating experience.

Windchimes

During the editing stage, another phenomenon comes into play. After a few weeks of intense editing, looking so closely at my own work begins to make me squirm with unease. It’s that kind of phenomenon that occurs when you examine a single word over and over and before you know it, you can’t be sure it’s spelled right. If I wasn’t working so closely with my editor who is very affirming – throwing in a compliment now and then – I might dump the whole novel!

From editing, I went straight into formatting. I’ll talk more about that in my next post. For now, I’m going to leave you with more wind chimes and the reminder that you can now pre-order a copy of the 4th book in the Crater Lake Series – No Compass to Right.

 

Large NCR release banner (2)

Fish chimes

Walking the High Wire of Editing

  Tight rope walker 2 - google images

“Oh, I think that I found myself a cheerleader. She is always right there when I need her.”

Popular music aside, that would be my editor!

As we plunge ahead with the last chapters of Maelstrom, the high wire we walk sings with tension. I attribute this to a few factors. One is definitely the desire to be done. Another is the fast-paced nature of this novel. We are feeling breathless as we teeter back and forth, placing our feet so carefully on the swinging juggernaut high above the earth. We are racing to the last page in much the same way the characters are.

Line-by-line editing can be tedious, it requires intense concentration and, from an author’s perspective, the whole process is humbling in the extreme. To have the same silly errors called to one’s attention, again and again, certainly serves to put the most egotistical of us in our place. Oh well, maybe that is just me. At the same time, there is joy to this work. An intense focus on the parts that make up the whole can be quite rewarding.

A good edit requires multiple readings. That kind of high-beam look at my own work can make me shiver with delight as layer under layer of the story is revealed. Though it might seem surprising, I am often just as surprised and delighted as my readers when it comes to symbolism and making the deeper connections.

From the stripped bones of my mother’s story to what this book is now becoming, this has been one amazing journey. I came across a line of dialogue the other day that has been there since the first draft. It is a remnant of my mom’s writing and I’ve loved it from the start.

Muttering a string of profanities, Turk searched his pockets for his house key. If he’d lost that damn key, his father was going to beat him. He found it and was about to fit it into the lock when the door swung open.

“Seen you coming up the front,” his mother said, clutching onto the edge of the door. “You took so long … figured you’d lost your key again.”

“Got it right here.” He pushed by his mother to get into the house.

“Where you been?” she asked.

“Around. Where’s Pa?”

“Had to work.” His mother stared at him. “You don’t look so good, Turk.”

He ran his eyes over her thin frame, the dark circles under her eyes and the red-flowered housecoat she was wearing. “Ain’t no picture yourself, Ma. Can I get something to eat?”

Ain’t no picture yourself, Ma. I love it!

Today, my editor complimented me on a descriptive section that I had worked hard to perfect.

The gardens behind the mansion were about as perfect as any gardens Laura had ever seen and she wondered how anything in the front could be fancier. The gardener had chosen well to ensure maximum colour. Late blooming beauty roses in myriad shades of pink chased over the tops of wooden trellises. Banks of feathery spirea stood tall behind the dramatic Apache Plume with its sage green foliage and white flowers floating over pink seed heads. Magenta coloured cranesbill jutted out in patches. There were beds of lavender and bunches of hollyhock blossoms so purple they looked almost black. Rust-red switch grass swayed in the breeze like a mist of colour along the edges of the paths.

Apache Plume - google images

I’m not one to blow my own horn, but I do believe Maelstrom is a book that has the potential for commercial success. In the first place, it is an easier genre to promote than my other work – a suspense/thriller that races along at a clip that will leave readers breathless. It is also wonderfully and painfully (at times) visual. I can almost see the movie version as I read.

I cannot wait to release this novel! I hope readers will be as thrilled with this action-packed, rollercoaster ride of a story as I am. My mother smiles upon me from the beyond as I teeter out on the high wire.

Tight rope walker - google images

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring

Wind Chimes - Bruce Witzel photo (1)

Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet – Roger Miller

Well, it never rains but it pours and those words are certainly true around our house. We’ve come through a week of truly, tremendous downpours. And, as to managing the many hats of a self-published author, I am currently in a deluge.

All good things, all good things, as snowman Olaf from the Disney film, Frozen, would say.

One of my top priorities right now is the line-by-line editing of Chasing Down the Night. Exhilarating is how I would describe this process. When one has found a good editor, one has found treasure indeed.

The deluge feeling came about the other day when I received an email from the assisted self-publisher who handles distribution for Disappearing in Plain Sight. As stated in my contract – and I must have been aware of this because when I looked back at the contract, I had highlighted this bit – after two years the company will begin to charge a nominal fee in order to continue handling distribution. Well, those two years are nearly up. Despite my prior knowledge – as evidenced by that pesky highlighting – the whole thing came as a surprise. How the time flies when we are having fun.

Nominal fee is a subjective term. It amounts to  $30.00 per ISBN, per year and Disappearing in Plain Sight has three ISBNs. Since I always planned to take the first book in the Crater Lake Series back from the assisted self-publisher and republish it under the Huckleberry Haven Publishing imprint, the time quite suddenly became now.

The process has me going back to the final Word document and tuning it up for my e-formatter, redoing the cover – those of you who love the original, don’t worry, we plan to get as close as possible – and eventually formatting the softcover for loading up to CreateSpace. The softcover formatting is the biggest hurdle for me as I handle that work myself. Bruce may have another opinion as he wrestles with the cover design for Chasing Down the Night and redoing Disappearing in Plain Sight.

There is a possibility I will lose my Amazon reviews when I put up the new version of Disappearing in Plain Sight. The idea of that makes me want to weep. Feedback on this issue is mixed. Some people tell me they’ve gone through three different publishing imprints with different ISBNs and their reviews always followed them. Others say the reviews will be lost. We’ll see.

This whole experience leads me to a valuable insight and some words from the wise – or at least someone who is struggling down the path. It is a huge amount of work to put a book out on your own, the learning curve is steep and it’s easy to be lured by the assisted self-publishing route. If I had to do it all again, I would bite the bullet and climb that steep curve from the start.

When all is said and done, I know I will be glad I am forced now to get on with the work of taking back my first novel. In this updated version of Disappearing in Plain Sight, I’ll be able to make clearer the connection to the rest of the books in the Crater Lake series. I can add chapter one of The Light Never Lies at the end of the e-book as a sneak peak. I will have control of all distribution.

As I said earlier, all good things, all good things. It’s raining, it’s pouring and I am far from snoring.

Crocus - Guenette photo

Work-in-Progress: The Light Never Lies

DSC_0046

My current work-in-progress, The Light Never Lies, (the sequel to Disappearing in Plain Sight) is moving along towards publication. In today’s post, I’ll overview how the process has unfolded so far.

I followed Stephen King’s sage advice and wrote the first draft in one season – January through March. I put the draft away for a month. When I took it out, the dust had barely settled. I got busy with a complete read through. I made note of the key areas that needed work. In the rush of creation, I had left a few blanks where relevant research had to be done. Scenes needed to be fleshed out with the detail that would come from that research. I discovered that all the characters were nodding, shrugging, smiling, and looking around way too much. Some serious work on the beats was necessary. In Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Browne and King define beats as, “. . . the bits of action interspersed through a scene . . . the literary equivalent of what is known as stage business.” I turned to the Emotional Thesaurus by Ackerman and Puglisi, to broaden the ways I expressed character emotion and to get a bit more creative with how I described character movement.

My next step was a significant 2nd draft rewrite. I then sent the manuscript off to my go-to beta-reader. Her feedback centered on sections of narrative that took the reader out of the story, dialogue that seemed awkward, and scenes where my writing process became too conspicuous. (Translation – information dumps, scenes that screamed of author indulgence, and sections that did not ring true.)

I was back to the drawing board for the 3rd draft. I addressed most of the above concerns and then sent my latest draft off to a couple of other beta readers. I know I’ll have to wait a bit for their feedback – they’re both busy women – but my experience tells me that what they will have to share will make the wait worthwhile.

Meanwhile, back at the lake, my editor and I have plunged right into line-by-line editing. We break the rules a bit on this one. Many sources say don’t get into this type of editing until you have a draft that you’re satisfied with. But for us, editing now becomes an integral, reiterative process. As the manuscript tightens up, line-by-line, I see the thorny issues that have been left hanging. There are still narrative sections that are too much tell and not enough show. I’ve also held onto scenes that are not necessary and therefore not worth wasting the time to improve.

I work along with, ahead of and behind my editor. When we reach the end of the first section, we’ll go right back to the beginning and re-edit that whole piece before moving on. Somewhere along the line of this process, the other beta-readers will weigh-in with their opinions and I’ll do more cutting and/or clarifying.

At the end of the editing, I’ll give the manuscript to my last beta-reader – my husband, Bruce. This will be the time for his technical expertise as well as his knack for spotting typos and missing words. He’s also going to be looking for specific instances when the sequel falls short of standing alone – missing information we’ve taken for granted because we know the first story so intimately.

Then I’ll read the entire manuscript out loud to him. Hopefully, at the end of that, we’ll be as close as we’re going to get to the finished product.

On the self-publishing front, many of you remember that for Disappearing in Plain Sight, I went with Friesen Press, an assisted-self-publishing company. For The Light Never Lies, I will be going it on my own. With this in mind, I’m working on several fronts.

HH LOGOI researched and then registered as a business – Huckleberry Haven Publishing. On his recent visit, my talented son created a logo for me. I applied to the Canadian government for my ISBN numbers and then assigned individual ISBN’s for both the upcoming trade paperback and the e-book of The Light Never Lies.

I’m practicing my word document template and formatting skills in preparation for when I will have to load my manuscript up to CreateSpace. The picture has been chosen for the cover. I’m looking into different programs that would allow us to create a quality cover-design on our own. My husband Bruce has waved his hand furiously in the air wanting the cover-design job. Go to it, I say. I find that type of work far too picky for my tastes.

I still have things to accomplish. I have to do some research on how I go about getting a barcode, decide if I’ll contract out the e-book formatting or tackle that myself, figure out if I have to pay for copyright registration and how I go about that, and no doubt there are a bunch of other issues I don’t even know about. So – that’s where I’m at on the current work-in-progress.

I’d love to hear where other people are at in the writing process. Drop me a comment and let’s get a conversation going. I hope you enjoy the pictures of the pink, oriental lilies that are blooming in our garden right now.

DSC_0030