I thought I’d tackle editing as a topic today. As a writer, this has become a part of the journey I have grown to… well, maybe not despise, but certainly, I recognise it is an exhausting part of the journey. It’s not just reading through my work; it’s casting a critical eye over what has been written and trying to decide how necessary the words, sentences, and sometimes even the chapters are. Removing parts of your manuscript that you have spent time developing is hard, but you later realise that it hampers flow or isn’t required to tell the story.

I never delete anything permanently, as I may later change my mind again. So, I keep files with deleted parts or save the manuscript in different versions to always have the original to revert back to. I find this makes removing parts easier, as they’re not truly gone… they’re just ‘moved’ somewhere else, and they can be retrieved if need be. Likewise, I do the same if I add more like an extra chapter is needed to explain a plot development or twist fully.

Having friends or family read through your first draft is essential, too, after you have completed a round or two of edits. It’s amazing the clarity they can bring, something simple like it not being clear which character you are referring to, and as the writer we are sometimes too close, we know our manuscripts well, and we don’t always see errors or issues with what we have written that the reader might find difficult to follow or understand. Excluding minor issues like this in your narrative makes reading more enjoyable if your reader doesn’t need to go back and try to make sense of what has been written.

An example is when I used ‘him’ to discuss two different characters in a few sentences. In my mind, it was clear who I was referencing, and it was only when my daughter read it that she admitted that this confused her. She asked me why the female main character was marrying her father. As much as this might make for an interesting idea for a fictional narrative, it’s not what I was trying to convey in my novel, so with a slight adjustment, my sentences flowed without any question of who I was discussing. My female main character definitely did not marry her father, and that was quickly corrected with minimal effort.

Once I am in the throes of editing, it can become mind-numbing. I actually begin to really dislike reading my own work. This was much more of an issue with my last novel, The Last Coven, as I had written a distinctly longer manuscript, so editing took much longer than anticipated. I was the best part of a month on my first edit, and then a second round, although quicker, left me seeing double. My eyes hurt, and I was tired of looking at my laptop.

I quickly learned that having a printed-out version was easier when editing, and moving forward with my next novel; I will definitely print my manuscript out for my first and second rounds of edits. What I can see on a printed version that I miss when this is done on my laptop is incredible. I’m not sure why, but it has helped me develop as a writer. I did a couple of rounds of edits before I passed it to my family to edit for me, too. This way, they saw something closer to the final draft that would be self–published, and hopefully, there would be fewer edits needed after their editing was complete.

I have learned a lot during the writing and editing phases of the novels I have written so far, and the journey is developing, changing, and adapting as I find ways to complete these elements of my work more efficiently. I have a system that works for me, and I don’t doubt this will be adapted or changed as I write and self–publish more of my work. I will say that I underestimated how long the process actually took, but I am better prepared going forward, and it is part of the journey as I grow and develop as a writer.