12/15/2024
Every Author Hates Editing!
This is number ninety-one in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“WHEN I WRITE, it’s golden. I don’t ever go back to it.”
That’s not a quote from me, but from an author I interviewed several years ago. I won’t even credit it because it is so absurd. Last week, I mentioned some of the steps that come after I’ve written a book. I think it’s time to delve deeper into the process.
First Draft
I usually write very rapidly because the ideas flood my mind and I need to write to get them down before I forget them. I’ve seen articles recently that indicate dementia and memory loss are related to diabetes, but that doesn’t make them less real. Short term memory is often sacrificed as a person gets older.
I was in a casino in Las Vegas when a pit boss came up to the table and told me I couldn’t play there because they don’t allow card counters. I looked at him in disbelief. “I’m seventy-five years old. If I could remember what cards have been played, I’d be able to remember why I walked into the kitchen.”
It’s a joke. I don’t have a kitchen.
But the truth is that if I think of something for a story in the middle of the night, I need to get up and write it down right fucking now! In the morning, it will be gone. Last night I thought of something for each of two stories I’m working on. One was a joke regarding people going on a camping trip. “Isobel’s idea of roughing it is having to share a hotel bathroom with her husband.”
The other was to include a resident of Portland, OR who is known for his nudism, dragon-head cane with a sword concealed, and his frequency at local strip clubs. He’s also an author and the Murder by Angus Vieira mysteries are well worth a read. Furthermore, I know the guy and he won’t object to me making a character out of him in Soulmates.
The important thing is those ideas have been committed to digital paper. I won’t forget them unless I forget where I wrote them down.
Story Edit
I shared an illustration from my story editor’s copy of Sisyphus a couple of weeks ago and I’m getting so much from her comments that I’ll share another as well.
Note that, in general, Lyndsy doesn’t make proofreading corrections unless she actually stumbles over something and can’t help herself. She knows and understands that the whole thing will be rewritten and places where she makes a proofreading correction are likely not to exist in the next draft.
I will mention that Lyndsy is not the only person reading the first draft. I have an alpha reader, Les, who keeps up as I generate each chapter and I can always talk to him about places where I’m trying to say something that isn’t coming along.
Also, though they don’t often comment, my Sausage Grinder Patrons at $10 per month, are reading my daily posts of what I have written that day. That is pretty raw and totally unedited, but is kind of exciting.
Rewrite
I’ve talked about the likelihood of a 90% rewrite of a first draft, so I won’t go into it again. Sometimes, however, the rewrite takes longer than the first draft. In fact, usually.
First and Second Proofreading
I have three final editors. Cie-mel and Old Rotorhead look at the content with differing points of view. Cie-mel is a careful proofreader, but also points out places where I’ve been inconsistent or where he struggles with a sentence structure.
Old Rotorhead is also a careful proofreader, but is a former lawyer, art docent, helicopter pilot, and world traveler. He has often filled in blanks in things I haven’t been clear on. Most memorably, when I was writing The Prodigal, Rotorhead sent me a detailed step-by-step description, list of terms, and YouTube videos about creating a fresco mural and how that differed from a secco mural. I was able to incorporate that into the final material.
The Prodigal and the other five books of the “Model Student” series are available individually or as a collection at Bookapy.
Third Proofreading
My line editor is Pixel the Cat. He is my final proofreader and often corrects things the other two miss. Nor is he afraid to suggest alternative structures for sentences. Even my blog posts go to him for proofing and checking before I post them.
It’s Not Over
There’s an important step between each of these items that I haven’t mentioned yet. After each step listed above, I read the manuscript. Before I send it on to the next editor, I read the manuscript again. I read my manuscript as many as seven or eight times in this process, and I find things in every reading that I want to change. Pixel has finally told me that if I make changes after he’s seen the manuscript, I need to send it to him again because I have been known to introduce errors even then.
But even when it is back from that last read-through, I have more contact with the manuscript. I have to change it from a manuscript to a book. I publish my books in three different formats—paper, eBook, and online serial. The paperback and eBook are done in Adobe InDesign. I have been using the product since it was introduced back in the 90s and am pretty proficient at getting what I want out of both the print version and the eBook version.
The online version is done in HTML. I hand code each chapter. Most people would consider this a completely unnecessary step, especially since some of the publishing engines, like Vixen at SOL, ignore some of my HTML formatting. For example, even when I code the entity for an apostrophe (’) preceding a date or shortened word (like ’24), Vixen reverses it to an open single quote. But during the process of coding, I often discover missing open or closed quotes, open-ended italics, and other items that I only see when I proofread the HTML code.
For me, the final step is to read the finished work in the online serial as it is posted. It is not unheard of for me to find a proofreading error we have all missed when I read this final version. And believe me, someone who is reading the online version is absolutely sure to find it and tell me about how I need better proofreading!
Once again, I’m barely getting this post written before it has to go up, so I don’t know for sure what next week will bring. Because of the way I’m currently working coming up to the end of the year, I have a feeling it will be something about managing multiple projects at the same time. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by them all right now!
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
