March
EdMo - the Month for Editing. Let’s just talk a bit about it for this month’s prompt...
Revision
Easy question: why is it necessary?
Editing is necessary because the first draft is all about getting the story and characters out of your head to where someone else can look at it. My first crack at making that happen may be passable, but it wn't be great- I'll still have all those pesky typos and characters changing their names mid paragraph and pathological liars with three different but similar backstories because the timeline kept shifting in my head as the character developed....
Well, you get the idea. No one really wants to read that- they want all the loose ends woven back in and character consistency and THE ONE TRUE STORYLINE and all that jazz.
Hard question: do you enjoy it?
Yes and no. I can enjoy editing when I'm in the mood for it- grammar is usually the fun part where you find the totally bogus mistakes or your phone tried to auto-correct to something completely out of context... and setting my characters heads straight on what exactly happened during their childhoods and when. All the fun and joy of tricking out my imaginary library in the sky and making it look awesome before I allow anyone else to see it.
On the other hand- editing takes forever. It's a constant struggle to keep doing something constructive instead of being pulled back into re-reading the story just for fun. Like fighting monsters instead of gathering enough stone to make the rest of the roof....
On the other hand- editing takes forever. It's a constant struggle to keep doing something constructive instead of being pulled back into re-reading the story just for fun. Like fighting monsters instead of gathering enough stone to make the rest of the roof....
Bonus: Take a selfie/novel-ie of you/your novel in the midst of revision.
Uh, this may appear at some unspecified time in the future?
Uh, this may appear at some unspecified time in the future?
