ISBW #78 – Editing
Argh. This was recorded an embarrassing three weeks ago. Not much has changed, but Playing for Keeps has launched, which is awesome!
- I sold a story to Podgeschichten.
- I finished my ALBATROSS story!
- Promo: The Process Diary
- Editing. Bleh.
- Promo: Scott Sigler Wants to Kill You
- Feedback: NaNoWriMo, young writers, action scenes, and publishing contests. Writer Beware is your friend.
- Check out the NaNoMonkeys.
About the Author: 
Caleb Ross | Nov 4, 2007 | Reply
Hey Mur,
Short time listener, here (though I have listened to all of your podcasts, post-original air date), but with intentions of sticking around for a while. Very nice podcast.
I wanted to pass on some editing tips I’ve developed/accumulated over the years. As far as my credentials, I have a degree in creative writing, various fiction and non-fiction published all around, and have 3 completed novels, two of which are currently being shopped around (1 under serious consideration by a small publisher). All this to say that, though I am not professional, I do hope I have enough history to warrant faith in these tips, all of which are simple but enormously effective.
Also, these tips deal mostly with the micro level (editing) as opposed to the macro level (re/drafting) of writing.
1. Change the font of your story/novel during rewrite. Something as simple as physically seeing the story differently can reveal a lot of grammatical and spelling errors.
2. Single-space your document when editing. It lets you see a lot more of your story at once, hence increasing the probability that you will notice inconsistencies.
3. When editing a novel, edit each chapter separately. Literally, cut the chapter from the full novel document and past into a separate document. This is more a mental crutch than anything, but I was amazed at how much more willing I was to focus on the line level when editing only 4 or 5 pages as opposed to 300+. When looking at 300 pages I have the tendency to skim, which is exactly what needs to be avoided during an edit. 5 pages is simply less daunting.
These methods are simple which is probably why they have worked so well for me.
Keep up the great podcast!
Caleb.
Stijn Hommes | Nov 5, 2007 | Reply
Aren’t those supposed to be called reprint sales, rather than rewrite sales?
Colin F | Nov 7, 2007 | Reply
Anyone else having trouble with the feed for this episode?
iTunes can see there’s a new episode, but it can’t download it? “An unknown error occurred (-39).”
Colin F | Nov 7, 2007 | Reply
Ooops. My bad! Turns out I had an incomplete download on my PC and iTunes isn’t so good at recovering from that.
Should have googled the error message sooner! Excuse me while I go listen to the episode.
paul caggegi | Nov 10, 2007 | Reply
Hey Mighty Mur – thanks so much for playing my promo, I really appreciate it! A show like yours keeps me inspired to keep working on my own stuff, cos I know someone else is out there doing the hard yards too.
Jotter Verhaeghe | Jan 5, 2008 | Reply
Hey Mur,
I liked the podcast and I hate editing too, but:
I have to disagree with the part of:
He saw the cat lick its paw.
In my opinion, if you’re writing first person, you can cut the saw. In third person viewpoint however, you can’t always do so.
Consider this:
1
He saw the cat lick its paw and all of a sudden it jumped at him and started clawing.
2
The cat licked its paw and all of a sudden it jumped at him and started clawing.
The difference lies in the fact that in the second part, you will have no idea of the cat’s position.
I totally agree that there are better ways to tell the cats position. If you say: ‘the cat in front of him licked…’ for example. But still I’d be careful on just cutting the ‘saw’. I guess it also is a question of style.
I reread my short stories a lot and then send them out to an army of proofreaders.
About the Gather contests… I’ve entered one and will never do so again. Because of the following reasons:
-popularity contest (they select on how many people you can drag over, get registred and vote for you, maybe they assume that you’ll be able to do the same with your book once it’s published)
-like you said, the contracts look okay, but are on the low side
-They failed to meet their deadlines (in my case). If you organize something and use other people’s work, then treat it right.