Charlie Steel's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
WRITING AND EDITING
(Prompted by anger and the work of editing a plethora of manuscripts)
This is what I have discovered about writing over the past 47 years. To me, finishing a story you have been working hard at, is a marvelous accomplishment. What a wonderful feeling it gives you. Then comes the time to review it, do a rewrite, and edit. You quickly discover that writing the manuscript is only 10% of the work. You have in fact just begun and you are far from being finished. The task of crafting the story into an accomplished piece is the hardest part of writing. I find I must get 90% more of the iceberg, the submerged sea of mistakes, completely corrected.
This is the reality I find myself in every time I pick up an old or new unpublished manuscript and start the process of refining the piece.
For me, completing the story involves a first, second, and third rewrite. It finally means reading out loud (with a professional editor) to catch the rhythm and style of the piece, to correct faulty sentences, to smooth them out and remove repeated words. With the first complete oral reading, you revise as you go, word by word, line by line, correcting sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation. (The verbal arguments with the one professional editor that can put up with me, pounds off the four walls. Sometimes we may argue over one sentence or paragraph for hours, and continue to rewrite.) This is followed by a second oral reading and revision. If I am lucky the third oral reading will go smoothly and require very little or zero corrections. Depending on how complicated the manuscript is, you may want a second editor to correct the final draft AND THEN you send it off for a technical edit by a professional. At this point, the finished story is ready to be sent off for publishing.
Depending on the length of the manuscript, this process can take weeks, months, and in one particular case, up to two years.
Then you send it off for professional computer layout by your publisher---which also takes time.
AND, when the first print or galley returns, it also must be gone over for mistakes.
And, when you finally get the story or book in your hands and you find an error! OH, the horror of it all!
THIS IS WHAT I REALLY HAVE TO SAY ABOUT EDITING!
I hate it! Editing a story is extremely stressful and one of the most difficult tasks on planet earth. I would rather have acid poured over my skin than edit. Yet, if you don’t edit, what do you have? Garbage! Or at the very least, embarrassment that will stay with you as long as the piece remains in print.
Finally, for those who DON'T follow a similar process and just throw the book out there without very careful edits and without a professional computer program layout (digital and print)...well...the book may sell, but the reader is getting a very poor product and the writer is being completely unprofessional.
AND...this doesn't even cover marketing and sales which is another difficult process!
My exclusive thoughts and experiences about editing, in the complex task of getting a story published.
Charlie Steel www.charliesteel.net
Charlie Steel - Google+
This is what I have discovered about writing over the past 47 years. To me, finishing a story you have been working hard at, is a marvelous accomplishment. What a wonderful feeling it gives you. Then comes the time to review it, do a rewrite, and edit. You quickly discover that writing the manuscript is only 10% of the work. You have in fact just begun and you are far from being finished. The task of crafting the story into an accomplished piece is the hardest part of writing. I find I must get 90% more of the iceberg, the submerged sea of mistakes, completely corrected.
This is the reality I find myself in every time I pick up an old or new unpublished manuscript and start the process of refining the piece.
For me, completing the story involves a first, second, and third rewrite. It finally means reading out loud (with a professional editor) to catch the rhythm and style of the piece, to correct faulty sentences, to smooth them out and remove repeated words. With the first complete oral reading, you revise as you go, word by word, line by line, correcting sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation. (The verbal arguments with the one professional editor that can put up with me, pounds off the four walls. Sometimes we may argue over one sentence or paragraph for hours, and continue to rewrite.) This is followed by a second oral reading and revision. If I am lucky the third oral reading will go smoothly and require very little or zero corrections. Depending on how complicated the manuscript is, you may want a second editor to correct the final draft AND THEN you send it off for a technical edit by a professional. At this point, the finished story is ready to be sent off for publishing.
Depending on the length of the manuscript, this process can take weeks, months, and in one particular case, up to two years.
Then you send it off for professional computer layout by your publisher---which also takes time.
AND, when the first print or galley returns, it also must be gone over for mistakes.
And, when you finally get the story or book in your hands and you find an error! OH, the horror of it all!
THIS IS WHAT I REALLY HAVE TO SAY ABOUT EDITING!
I hate it! Editing a story is extremely stressful and one of the most difficult tasks on planet earth. I would rather have acid poured over my skin than edit. Yet, if you don’t edit, what do you have? Garbage! Or at the very least, embarrassment that will stay with you as long as the piece remains in print.
Finally, for those who DON'T follow a similar process and just throw the book out there without very careful edits and without a professional computer program layout (digital and print)...well...the book may sell, but the reader is getting a very poor product and the writer is being completely unprofessional.
AND...this doesn't even cover marketing and sales which is another difficult process!
My exclusive thoughts and experiences about editing, in the complex task of getting a story published.
Charlie Steel www.charliesteel.net
Charlie Steel - Google+
