I mean, of course, that deja-vu insanity, editing.
As a novelist, you’ve got to not only write the whole book, but then you have to sit down and read it again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
And again.
And when you’re really, really sick of it, read it again.
I have dual feelings about this. On the one hand, I have come to enjoy editing, making a bunch of changes to a work then reading it over and seeing how the changes make everything flow better. There’s a real sense of pride there, and accomplishment, and when you can see the changes you make improving it all, that’s motivating.
On the other hand, you have to read the same story over and over and over and over and over again. I can’t pick up a book that I just read by someone else, but I have to do it with my own work. Not just once or twice, but ad nauseam. I find that four or five times usually does it. And by then, I want the stupid thing to go away.
I didn’t start this way. Originally, I wrote a book, I read it over again once when I was done and tweaked it a little, then started on something else. (This would be in my baby writer days, when I had written only two very short books, and not good ones at that.) When I decided to self-publish “In the Dark” the first time, that’s when I decided to give it another polish. Then another, then another, and to be sure, another. The thought of other eyes — especially strange eyes — reading my words made me want to get it as right as I could. What struck me was how I kept finding things to change. A lot. Every time. Eventually I abandoned my edits and put it out there. But when self-publishing went from “stupid decision that will not get you anywhere” to “hip and trendy thing that people are actually making money at,” I decided to do it all over. So I pulled out “In the Dark” for one final shine-up.
Only to find that it wasn’t that good. I’d improved a lot as a writer over the years. So I edited it. And again. And again. I think I went through it 5 more times before I gave it to beta readers, then another time after that to make sure the changes they suggested worked.
Like I said, on the one hand, I have gotten to a point where I like editing, and then there’s the slog through a book you’ve already read five times in less than six months. It’s a love/hate thing, for sure.
And I’m still nervous. I read that book until I was finally only changing a comma here or a word there, and I still worry that I could have fixed more. There’s this delicate balance between editing until you’re done, and editing the same way someone chews their fingernails.
Ah, well. It’s out there now, and getting good reviews from people who’ve read it. I think I’ll settle for that, and keep editing the next book.
