Some Thoughts on Editing

Up until two weeks ago, if asked whether or not I liked editing, I would have replied with a most definite no.

Now, I'm not so sure.

See… I've been writing Riddle Rose, and when I reached Chapter 9 I realized that there were a few things I wanted to change in the first three chapters before I posted Chapter 9.

And so I went and rewrote all of Chapter 1. I feel a lot better about it now, but I still have Chapters 2 and 3 to edit.

And all of a sudden, I don't want to keep writing until I've hammered out the first eight chapters.

This has never happened to me before. I wrote part of Chapter 10 because I had this lovely idea… but after I finished it I realized it really had nothing to do with the main story line, and that it was probably better off out of the book.

When did this happen? When did my inner editor suddenly get so much power? I don't remember the muse letting him in. I don't remember letting him in.

I never used to edit. Maybe a cursory typo check… but never for real, except when I tried to edit the disastrous remains of what was NaNo'09 (it was so disastrous it didn't have an acceptable title, which NaNo'08 did have). And that was painful. There was no story line beyond following the very strange story of Edward.

But now Riddle Rose does have a story line. It has characters and they have actual motivations now (I think. I was always crap at figuring them out), with a plot that might be somewhat predictable. But I don't care so much if it's predictable— it's fun to write.

It's just that I have this very real fear that if I finish it, I won't want to edit it. It' s happened this way with every thing I've written— I finish and then I don't want to edit.

But Riddle Rose deserves a chance, so I'm editing as I go.

And now I'm starting to wonder if perhaps I didn't make the wrong choice. On the one hand… I've finished writing at least six novels, and edited none of them. 

That's going to change in March, with NaNoEdMo coming along, but I'm trying to figure out how I can edit.

But now I'm starting to wonder… editing at the cost of writing? I'm still writing, but does it really work to write so little on a story? I was writing maybe a chapter a week at the beginning, and now I've put even that on pause so I can edit.

Is this normal? Is it just because I'm writing by chapters, with a separate chapter per Scrivener document? Is it because I'm writing so slowly? Is it because I've dubbed it my 'pet project' and I want it to be as good as it can be? Is it because I've decided to 'learn' how to edit?

Or is it all of these things?

Or is it that I'm simply more interested in these sorts of things now than I ever was before?

Whatever it is…

I guess it's quite good— at least I'm finally going to have a proper ending to a story. XD

My First Edit

When I was in fourth grade, we were given an assignment to write our own legend. About how something happened, or why something is the way it is… etc.

I eventually came up with "How We Got Horses," which basically was about a boy and a donkey. Something happened and then there was a pure white horse in the world.

We had to edit these legends, though, and I ended up with one of the teachers that I think taught special education, but had ended up in Mrs. VanSkiver's room to help. He sat me down at a little table. A book about JK Rowling was there, kind of looking at me, and the table was yellow, but that's all I remember.

And he read the story, while I was kind of sitting there, and then he said, "Well, I don't like the word 'got.' So how can we change that?"

That is literally all I remember past the fact that the title was changed to How Horses Came To Be and we eliminated all use of the word 'got.'

During that assignment we also learned to read aloud— don't obstruct your mouth with the book or paper, don't tilt your head down, speak slowly and clearly and loudly.

And these two things have remained with me till now. Every time I read aloud I remember sitting on a stool in front of the class to read my legend out loud, and every time I get a weird thing like 'how we got,' I remember that man in the brown, short-sleeved, collared shirt saying, "I don't like the word 'got.'" And rewriting that thing in pencil in my terrible nine-year-old handwriting, and then typing it up and printing it out on… light blue paper with clouds, I think.