Whenever I manage to finish writing a story, I get to rediscover that writing the book was the easy part. Now I’m about to journey through the not-so-great joys of editing.
To alleviate this I watch a lot of youtube videos on the subject. There are quite a few people who go through the different types of editing. But whenever I edit, it’s a free-for-all. The line edits are forced to be with the proofreading and don’t get me started on the structural editing. It’s all one big party where I’m ripping out my fingernails because I hate parties.
My word documents all end up either covered in red (at least first to fourth drafts) or minimally wounded by the time I’m ready for it be self-published (aka getting sick of it). As revisions go on it does get quicker/easier, both because I’m getting better at killing my darlings and increasingly more confident in my editing abilities.
To people out there who think that editing is something daunting like climbing a mountain when you’ve never done such a thing, then do not fret. You don’t experience, you just need persistence. Afterall you just finished writing a manuscript. That’s something a lot of people never manage to do. Hooray!
Stephanie Haggarty 