Editing for Dummies

Writing a book is hard work. I've discovered editing to be an even trickier slope to climb.

Through my efforts at finding an agent, I've had the chance to correspond with Paul, a marvelous human being who has provided me with an in-depth review on a portion of my work and excellent advice on how to make First Act of War better. (This is in stark contrast to the other three agents who politely said no, and nothing else.)

Editing, it seems, is where books thrive or die.

For a long time, I thought just getting the entire story down on paper was the most challenging aspect of writing a book. I've now accomplished this twice and it takes an unbelievable amount of time and commitment to actually finish a novel. Paul has clearly articulated that editing is where the real work begins. Apparently many people can write books, but there are precious few quality editors out there willing to tackle manuscripts and truly refine them into something worthy of publishing.

I thought I was a pretty good editor. But after comments from my excellent alpha readers, and after Paul's partial review, I realized that I yet have my work cut out for me. It's not that I'm lousy at it. I'm just inexperienced, and let's face it, editing 165,000 words isn't like editing a blog post.

The next steps are fortunately clear. Kathe, my first college English professor, and also the professor who worked with me on Noble Born, my honors thesis, is currently editing my book. Having already worked with me on one 100,000-plus-word book, she knows what she's getting into. The book is in good hands. I'll tackle it once she's finished and I expect the end result will be quite a bit better than anything I could have ever managed on my own.

In short, if you're seriously writing a novel, find yourself a good editor who isn't you, especially if you're relatively new to the process. Writing is just the first step. Editing is an entire flight of stairs.