I wasn’t sure when I started blogging how many times was the ‘right’ amount of time to blog. Some research I did said daily – some said weekly, mine seems to be gravitating to weekly – purely down to having the time and I want the content to be a true reflection of my journey.
So lets talk again about editing, (insert being sick face-cannot find emoji on my laptop!) Is the editing process harder than I thought? the answer is yes. Why I hear you cry? Well for me as you can probably tell from my blog. Punctuation is not my strong point, mainly because in normal day to day life (insert : ; , . one of these, you choose!) I don’t have that much to do with it – well not in the different way it is used when writing and editing a book! Its a very different ball game – well it is for me. Also I asked a good friend (I think he is still my friend) to look over my first 10 chapters and edit for me. You have to develop a thick skin – its true – no getting away from it if you are going to write. I will admit to a certain amount of despair when I thought I had done quite well, only to get a chapter back that looked like it had been in a horror movie! I have RED ON ME!
A lot of this was my fault. I have mentioned I get carried away! I decided to write a book, therefore I did it with very little knowledge or research. Now I feel I am paying the price a little bit, but I have had a word with myself and got over it. I have decided to embrace the editing process, own it and enjoy it; I know I am going to be editing a lot longer than it took me to write my story! My only other option was to publish it and only allow Yorkshire people to read it as we tend to not require as many pauses in our speech 🙂 (I can say this I am from Yorkshire!) I could probably read a whole book without ; ; , . and I would be fine lol.
SO, the book. I am now up to Chapter 14 of the first edit. I have 64 chapters at the moment and my word count is 63,500, so making good progress. Having done some research into editing. I think the average is about 3/4 edits. My plan is to edit, full read through. edit, full read and then hand it over for someone to check (gulp).
Also on editing (sorry I will shut up soon) I found it very easy to write my story without any number of interruptions . In Stephen King’s book on writing he mentioned only writing in a certain place and with no distractions. I didn’t agree with this – if he ever reads this I will probably die in a horrible way in his next book- sorry Stephen 😦 . I can write anywhere pretty much and distractions don’t bother me. Not with editing – I recommend fitting a sound proof room – although if my main character did this it would be for a very different reason.
Anyway signing off now. Hope this had helped in some way and any budding writers are not stomping, eating or shredding their fledgling books! I promise it will be worth it, I can already see my book maturing and its my first edit and I haven’t got a clue what I am doing.
Properly going now.. ;;,.;,;.,,,,,;;…..>>/?????
C.L. Peache 