Editing process is making me lose motivation
- alithegirlwho
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Editing process is making me lose motivation
Any tips?
- moderntimes
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For example, I finished my 3rd novel last April. Then I submitted it to a painstaking edit and rewrite, every word and every sentence tested for its rhythm and strength. It took me till October before I felt satisfied. Spending a few months with your editing is typical and requisite.
You've got to ensure yourself that your book is a perfect as you can make it prior to submission. One suggestion is to read the book aloud to yourself. This greatly helps you hear the book's dialogue and narrative and helps you develop a feel for the changes needed.
Believe me, you'll never regret the time you spend in the editing process, if only to ensure that there are zero mechanical errors or misspellings. Unless you're a famous politician or movie star, an agent or publisher will judge your submission harshly if there are more than a scattered few typos.
I don't know how to provide your with incentive. That has to come from within. Just realize that editing is a PART of the entire writing process, a very essential part. You gotta do it. Motivate yourself by holding up the goal of providing a precisely written and carefully edited manuscript for submission to that agent or publisher. And keep plugging away.
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As per motivation, hm... I remember that after I proofed my last novel, I was burnt out big time. OK, here's your motivation: if you go to the Barnes & Noble web site, they'll print out your book for you in hardcover and ship it to you. This doesn't publish your book, it just gives you a gorgeous copy. But you don't want a gorgeous copy until you've proofed, right?
- ALynnPowers
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But, yeah, like zelda said, you wouldn't want to see a beautiful copy of your book if it wasn't perfect, right?
- moderntimes
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Take a small break, as Alynn recommended, then get into it full bore, and go at the editing hammer and tongs. It has to be done and it's a labor of love. Or so you can tell yourself at 2am, ha ha.
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That being said, I usually try to write as much as a work as I can without doing any major editing, because it does slow me down in the process of creation, plus I second-guess myself too often. Afterwards, I then just force myself to go through editing and/or revisions whether I really want to or not, doing as much as possible. If I reach a point where I just cannot go on, sometimes I have had to take a few months or even a year or more off of editing because it was overwhelming or complex at the time. I worked on other things during that time, and come back to the former manuscript when refreshed and enthusiastic again.
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- moderntimes
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I am however a pretty fair typist (fast too) and generally accurate, so there aren't a lot of mechanical errors. But composition "errors" are rampant. I overuse certain terms "... it was a bit like..." is my worst. I fiddle with "for whom" and "who" construction, and of course massage the dialogue and narrative over and over until it's as perfect as I can make it. This takes months for a novel.
It's the price to pay for being a writer -- you must rewrite and rehash until it's excellent, and then you still make changes. Comes with the territory.
- sarahpayne23
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- CCtheBrave
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- moderntimes
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So I don't seem to need a pro paid-for edit -- of course my publisher edits and reviews the novels as a part of the biz.
But getting bogged down in editing? I understand that this can happen.
What I recommend is that the writer accept editing and revision and rewriting as part of the whole process, not as a separate task which is tacked onto the creative effort used to write the book in the first place. In other words, editing is part of the whole, and it's an elemental segment of the work in progress.
Besides, reviewing and editing can help you find glitches in the text, and from a thorough review, you can find places where you might describe something better with a little tweak or two. A comprehensive edit of your writing is essential anyway, where you will often fix things which were earlier overlooked.
It's a mental attitude, I think. When you "finish" the book it's not really finished. It's only finished after you've thoroughly re-read and edited the book (or short story, whatever) until you feel that it's gleaming with gloss from perfection, ha ha.