Pat me on the back, please, because I have finally got past my read-it-in-one-sitting procrastination problem and am now editing, bit by bit, my first novel manuscript.
If you’ve been paying attention over the past year or so you will know that this poor novel has already seen quite a few incarnations. It began as the scrappy product of a frantic NaNoWriMo experience in November 2007 and then got brushed up and rewritten with a few additions (at one stage, five extra chapters) for submission to a couple of contests. Each time I felt like I was cheating myself a little bit, because by writing to a strict contest deadline I wasn’t rewriting as much as I felt the novel deserved.
So now I’m really going for it. I’ve had a couple of sessions with a cup of fruit tea and a pen, sitting on the couch with my printed manuscript open in a ring binder on my lap. Editing away from the computer is really a lovely thing and I’m enjoying it so much.
As I edit, I’m scribbling all kinds of notes all over the place. Enough time has passed that I feel quite detached from this manuscript and am seeing it with really quite fresh eyes, and am able to cheerfully add question marks and notes to reconsider various parts of the text, as though I’m telling a friend rather than myself. Curiously (for me) I’m often not solving these problems on this first read-through, just marking them as questions – “Is this OK or …?” kind of questions – to think about again later.
Thanks to Stephen King I am also ferociously deleting adverbs. Well, except for ferociously. But seriously, in my manuscript I am taking out nearly every adverb I see (and I’m happy there are less than I would have expected) and either using a stronger verb or just letting the rest of the sentence stand for itself. It makes sense. I’m also remembering his rule of deleting 10% of a manuscript between drafts. I am cutting ruthlessly. (Damn, there’s another adverb). And I don’t feel so bad about it.
It’s early days in this extensive edit – I’m only into the second chapter – but it is really a lot of fun. Fixing up everything after I’ve finished the edit might not be quite as fun, but I know that the end product will be a novel that’s eminently (!) more readable and is something I think I’ll be able to start shipping round to agents.
