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Hello everyone, and welcome back to my newsletter! It's hard to believe March is here already. The weeks are flying by, and I find myself looking forward to the warmer weather that will eventually find its way here.This month in "A Writing Journey: When Shadows Fall", we dive into the difficult process of editing a book. Previous newsletters and prior segments of my writing journey can be found here at my website's exclusive email archive. Stick around until the end for some bonus kitty pictures! |
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February has been a busy month as I've juggled working on proofreading, formatting, cover art, and front and back matter for When Shadows Fall. Cover art has continued to be a bumpy process, with miscommunications at seemingly every turn. However, despite the added time and stress this has caused, I am encouraged to see how close we are to a finished product. I should be sending out a cover art reveal very soon, so stay tuned for that!
In other news, I was honoured to participate in a local authors event alongside three other authors a few weeks ago, where I did a twenty minute reading of When Shadows Fall. It felt very gratifying to do my first event as an "official" author, and it has gotten me even more excited for the book's release!
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My main goal for March is to get advanced reader copies (ARCs) of When Shadows Fall to a handful of readers before the end of the month.
That means I need to finish proofreading and formatting, finalize the cover and the front and back matter, upload my book to draft2digital and Kindle Direct Publishing, order a proof copy, and do a final read through to make sure everything is in order. I also hope to do a cover art reveal, set up e-book pre-orders, and announce the book's release date.
Thankfully, I am nearly done proofreading and formatting, but it is going to be a busy month regardless!
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Miss the previous segment? |
Part 7:The Never-Ending Edits
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Drafting and revising a book takes a lot of time, but it's only half of the process. Once the story is finally in shape, it is time to turn your attention to the prose.
While the first stages of writing a book are about getting the ideas right, editing is all about getting the words right. Instead of looking at plot, pacing, character development, or world building, editing focuses on things like sentence structure and word choice. This is the time to remove redundant writing, smooth out awkward and stilted wording, pay attention to grammar, syntax, and flow, and so on.
I usually start by printing a copy of the story and reading through it, marking areas that need improvement and making notes to myself. I then make edits to my digital copy using these notes. After that, I go over the entire story a few more times, making changes as I go. During this phase, I tend to skip back and forth a lot, as I often find it necessary to take a break from certain passages. This allows me to approach problem paragraphs with fresh eyes later on, or to see if the changes I made previously are satisfactory.
In addition to polishing the prose by focusing on word choice and sentence structure, I spend a lot of my editing time reducing the word count and removing redundant writing. I have a tendency to overwrite, meaning I use far more words than necessary to get my point across. I prefer to convey ideas and information in multiple ways when I'm writing, so that during editing, I can pick and choose the strongest lines.
This helps me write stronger dialogue and descriptions, but it also means I have to spend a lot of time cutting out repetitive sentences and paragraphs. I can get stuck for what feels like an eternity on a single paragraph, trying to cherry pick the best words, sentence structures, and phrases, and then somehow put them together in a way that sounds natural. This can be a challenging task, (not to mention frustrating!), and is the biggest reason that editing takes me so long to complete.
When I am finally nearing the end of this process, I read the novel out loud at least once, as this is the best way to test the prose. It allows you to catch things you would otherwise miss, and gives you a better sense of flow and rhythm than reading in your head does. Even when I am doing normal edits, I will often pause to read passages out loud to test the changes I've made.
And when does this stage end, you ask? Well, I call it the never-ending edits for a reason. The trouble with editing is that you're never really "done", because the prose could always be improved in some way. There are always words that could be cut, descriptions that could be stronger, sentences that could sound smoother. I could spend a literal eternity going over the same passage and still feel it could be better.
But finally, I have to accept my story as it is and move on. Otherwise, I'd end up stuck fixating on things that don't really matter as I strive endlessly for an unattainable level of perfection!
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The line between "revisions", "editing" and "proofreading" gets pretty fuzzy, and there is inevitably some overlap between editing and writing a book. I made countless changes to the wording of When Shadows Fall during the drafting and revision stages, however, the prose still needed plenty of work after that.
I went through the story a few times myself, and then hired a professional editor to take a look at it. My editor alerted me to some of my bad writing habits, pointed out errors in my use of punctuation, and polished the prose with a number of simple edits. While I was pleased with the improvement this made, I still felt the writing needed more attention. I decided to read through the story out loud after applying her suggestions, and made several additional changes as I went.
A part of me wanted to go over it one more time after this, but thankfully, I recognized I was getting too fixated on being 'perfect'. So I forced myself to pass the book along to my proofreaders, initiating the final stage in finishing the book!
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Stay tuned for Part 8: Proofreading and Formatting
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I did not find much time for drawing this month, but I still managed to add a couple of new images to my Redbubble store. This included a special birthday commission for my sister, featuring a character from my unfinished comic book "The Wizard of Om", a light-hearted and humorous take on the "The Wizard of Oz".
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Clicking on an image will open the sticker version of that drawing. Scroll down and click "view this design on +(number) products" to see all available products for that design! |
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Reading: I am nearing the end of my reread of the "Guardians of Ga'Hoole" series. It's been a delightful blast from the past, especially book 5, which was a gift from the girls in my class long ago. I had been so devastated that I couldn't afford to buy it from the school book fair that they decided to all chip in and get it for me as a surprise. Seeing their signatures on the front page still warms my heart after all these years, even if I did end up dropping the book in a mud puddle a few days after receiving it!
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As always, thank you for following me on this journey. If you've made it this far, please accept this reward of kitty pictures!
I recently got a second-hand cat tower for Kaylee, but in true cat fashion, she has been diligently ignoring it, opting instead to snooze in her OLD cat tower that I have not yet gotten rid of.
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Kaylee defying all my attempts to get her to investigate her new tower. |
And a second bonus Kaylee picture! I couldn't help but share how cute she looks snuggled up in my lap. ❤ |
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#11 1305 23rd Avenue, Regina, Saskatchewan, S4S 3S4, Canada |
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