Editing by hand

Now that The Long Night is out, I can turn my attention to other projects, namely the two books that are written and in the dreaded editing stage. I had hopped to knock out Killing to Know, but in my haste sent it to my editor, a draft to early and it is taking longer then expected, sorry Bill my bad.

So I turned to my other finished first draft, Breaking Overnight. I'm not sure if I have mentioned that project here so I'll give you my loyal readers a quick synopsis. Breaking Overnight, is Die Hard in a TV station. I feel that sentence gives you a basic understanding of the plot but doesn't give to much away, though I feel like I'm pitching a 90's action movie when they were all "Its like Die Hard but..."

This isn't a post about Breaking Overnight that is coming later, this is about editing, and figuring out a system to move your manuscripts from first draft to something that isn't embarrassing for another human to see. I worked by hand for a draft on The Long Night, and not Killing to Know, seeing how those turned out I desided that maybe a red pen was by best friend this early in the project.

Chapter four bleeding

I started printing the book out chapter by chapter to make my edits.  This one is longer chapters broken up in to sections. Once printed I would then make the pages bleed like a camp counselor at Crystal Lake. I find that looking at the work on paper, gives me a different view than seeing it on the computer monitor. I can make changes but not instantly. It lets you see your mental thought possess, and mistakes that you might have glanced over before. Allowing you to more fully digest the edits, so that you don't make the same mistakes again when your writing.   

Once done with each chapter I am making the edits on the computer and running it through Serenity's editor to clean it up another notch. I think I'll do another post about Serenity later, it really is a great program.

Well time to get back to work.