Tag / editing

by Becca Spence Dobias

So You’re a NaNoWriMo Revision Rebel?

Though you’ve likely heard of NaNoWriMo, you may not know about NaNo Rebels. These are writers who participate in the month-long writing marathon, but don’t follow the rules. They may write essays or nonfiction instead of novels, they may set a word count other than 50,000. They may work on more than one project at once. Or they may revise instead of writing something new. Since I’m knee-deep in the edits for Rock of Ages, if I participate in NaNoWrimo this November, it will be as a rebel. I love the excitement of the month and the tools the program offers, but other than posts on the site’s forums and a few blog posts, I haven’t found tons of resources for participating as a rebel. If you’re planning to use the month to revise, read on for my plan.

Using the Word Tracker

This is the main topic of discussion amongst revision rebels. How do you translate 50,000 words into editing? People tend to do one of a few things:

  • Words processed- Count each word of your old manuscript that you go through
  • Words in the new version- Count the words in your revised work, even if some are copied and pasted or only changed a little bit. These first two are useful if you’re working on a new vomit draft.
  • Daily work- Some people aim to work on their revisions each day for the month. Each day you work, add 1667 words to your count.
  • Time- 1 hour= 500 words, 1 hour= 1000 words, 1 hour= 1667 words, etc. Since I’m trying to slow down and be more deliberate for this draft, this is likely the way I’ll go, though I haven’t decided my time to words ratio yet. A bonus to using this method is that you can count things like research toward your goal. It also leaves room to go over the same passage multiple times without hindering your word count.

Word Sprints

Word sprints are one of the most helpful tools for me when I’m aiming for quantity. These timed sprints often take place on Twitter, but you can do them with a writing friend, too! They help you circumvent your inner editor and get the words flowing. If you’re trying to summon your inner editor, though, you don’t want to suppress her. Here are some ways to harness the energy of a word sprint if you’re revising:

  • If you’re counting words processed or words in your new version, go ahead and race! You can always go back and edit your edits whe the sprint is done.
  • Use it as a focus tool. Ban yourself from looking at or doing anything else for the five, ten, or twenty minutes of the sprint. Even if you just sit there staring at your manuscript, don’t give in to distraction for the set amount of time. Maybe you’ll get something done, or maybe you’ll give your brain enough of a rest that you’ll be able to focus more afterwards.
  • Use it as a break. Give yourself the time of the sprint to work on something new or to do some stream of consciousness writing. You won’t feel guilty that you aren’t getting your revision done because, hey, it’s just a few minutes, and the excitement of writing will likely re-energize you when you return to your draft.
  • Use it for character or world building work. Use the time to write freely about a character’s arc, a scene from their childhood, or a discussion between two of your characters. Write a scene from your world that isn’t in the book. Describe how part of it looks, feels, smells, sounds, and tastes. Write one of your scenes without people. Write one from a different character’s point of view. All of this will help you shape your actual manuscript even if it doesn’t end up in the final version of your book.

Rejoice, Rebel!

Don’t feel guilty about being a revision rebel. NaNoWriMo is a tool to help with your writing. If it’s working for you, then you’re participating, even if you aren’t doing the classic 50,000 new words in 30 days. One of the best parts is the community! So gather your friends, attend a write in, enjoy the forums and the Twitter chat. Sense the buzz in the air that is the worldwide writing community feeling motivated and excited. Happy Almost NaNoWriMo!

by Becca Spence Dobias

An Editing Pep Talk

I’m writing this because I need it. The Internet is full of writing pep talks, largely due to NaNoWriMo. There are plenty of posts about just getting the words out, not thinking about quality, and suppressing your inner editor. There are inspirational diatribes about how you can worry about editing later, essays about the merits of writing for writings’ sake. But what if you’ve already got the words out? What about people in the midst of editing? What about when it’s time to wake that inner editor up?

I googled, “Editing Pep Talk” and came up with article after article about getting motivated to write. So for anyone slogging through the swamp of a major editing project, this is for you.

You’ve written a book. You’ve suppressed the urge to edit as you go. You’ve ignored the little voice inside that told you that maybe you weren’t good enough or asked what business you have trying to be a writer. You’ve put some of your deepest self on the page, some of your biggest truths, your hardest or most precious memories. This is brave. You committed enough of your time to creating that you’ve come out with this thing. A book is a big deal.

Maybe you tucked it away for a while. Maybe you’ve shown it to some people you trust. Maybe you have a publishing deal! But now you’re realizing that just getting the words out is important, but for this particular book, it isn’t enough. Writing is a revolutionary, sometimes healing act. Sometimes just the creating is enough. But sometimes you realize that what you’ve created is asking for more. It wants to be seen, read, breathed. The world wants it.

This is harder than writing. Don’t tell someone this before they’ve got the writing thing done, but the writing is the easy part. Yes, it’s brave putting yourself on paper. Looking at it again is like looking at yourself naked in the mirror after a night of drinking with the sun shining through the window right on your hungover, unwashed, puffy-eyed face.

It’s the come down after a mania. It’s realizing that maybe you aren’t as interesting, talented, or unique as you thought you were and if you want anything to come of this culmination of incredible effort that  you’ve completed you’re going to have to put in even more work.

Writing is exhilerating. You watch the page fill, your word count go up, up, up. You can work yourself into a frenzy and thrill at the speed at which the words pour out. Even when the going is slow, you’re moving forward toward a goal.

Editing is slow. It’s lonely. It’s circular. It’s endless.

But it’s necessary, and your book deserves it. There’s a community of writers in the world who have been there and they know how hard it is. For every person who thinks editing just means combing through your manuscript for typos, there’s another who has spent five days staring at the same paragraph, reworking it and reworking it until it shines. People might not see you now as you’re questioning each word, analyzing how it relates to its neighbors, but they will see you when you’re done. It will speak to them in a deeper way, flow into their hearts more smoothly, because of the work you are putting in. Each second you spend on improving your book will make it better.

Every great book has been through this process.

None of this is in vain. You won’t be satisfied by mediocrity and because of that, you will emerge with a masterpiece. You might have to hibernate. If you are used to word sprints and  virtual high fives, you may feel like you are going through something of a detox. You might need to hide away, envelop yourself in your closet or office, create a bubble around yourself and your book. You are about to get intimate and rushing through it won’t be helpful. Hunker down and read closely. Read fantastic books and take notes. Be hard on yourself. Let any feedback you’ve received be hard on you too. Take it in and make it useful. This isn’t about getting through something. This is about working and working until it’s right.

And you will. Because you’ve committed to it. You’ve committed to this book and to yourself. Your book will be best it can possibly be and you’ll always know it’s because of the work you’re putting in now.

by Becca Spence Dobias

There Might Be More Than One Vomit Draft (And Other Lessons From Editing A Book)

I am about to embark on the 5th draft of my novel. Before beginning this process, I don’t think this statement would have necessarily surprised me, but I didn’t fully understand it either. “Of course you go through several drafts,” I may have thought. “You find new mistakes each time.” What I didn’t realize yet is that each draft serves a different purpose– is really almost a different book.

The Vomit Pass

My first draft was my “vomit pass.” Touted by folks like Judd Apatow and Lena Dunham, and encouraged by the structure of marathon writing programs like NaNoWriMo, this is the idea that you just have to get the words down. They don’t have to be good. They don’t even have to make sense. You just have to suppress the urge to edit as you go and get a lot of words on the page. For Rock of Ages, this was about 50,000 words of stream of consciousness writing. I got out stories from my own life as well as some based on family stories and my dad’s poetry. It was definitely a mess, definitely not cohesive, but I still think there were some gems in it. There was emotion in it and it was honest.

Finding a Story

Years later I came back to this jumbled mess and decided to make something of it. I laid each of the stories out on an index card and moved them around until they were in an order that made sense. I filled things in to make a plot–  a string that tied one story to the another. At this point I was pretty convinced I was a genius. When I read authors talk about how bad their early drafts were, I thought I was one of those rare writers with extraordinary natural talent. This book would be a classic, I thought, and I’d already done most of the work on it.

Fixing it Up

Now sufficiently confident, I sent my book out to some beta readers, who responded well. Bolstered by their approval, after another long break (to have some babies), I started doing some line editing. I changed sentences to make them read better and fixed some spelling mistakes. This round was easier, but much less exciting. This is the draft I sent to Inkshares.

The Developmental Rewrite (Vomit Pass Take Two)

My editor had a lot of suggestions, and surprisingly, in spite of my previous big headedness, I was extremely excited about all of them. We worked together to rework the book’s outline, taking out some superfluous plot lines and fleshing out the important stories and characters. I worked ridiculously hard for three months rewriting the book based on this outline, adding description, researching time periods and places. I ended up with a new draft that was almost 40,000 words longer than the one I had sent in. I felt like a badass. Now this was the big hurdle on my way to a finished book, I thought, and I had rocked it. I knew there would be more changes. Maybe I’d have to rewrite a few chapters, hone my prose some more.

So when I talked to my editor a couple days ago and he referenced this as my “vomit draft” my heart sunk for a moment. I had done a vomit draft! Three drafts ago.

I realized though, that in an intensive edit like this, there might be more than one vomit draft. Any time you change so much of the outline, you’ll have to have a round of just getting the words out there.

The Old POV Switcharoo

So now I’m back to step two again– improving the vomit draft. I’m switching from first to third person. I’m overwhelmed by this huge task, but not upset about it. I needed to use first person to get into my characters’ heads and write them authentically and now I need to use third person to improve the prose. I’ll be working on my descriptions, on making them even more authentic for their time periods. I’ll be working to make my book very literary– not just the meanings of the words but the words themselves, their sounds, will invoke the feelings I want to convey. I’m taking it all to another level.

My editor was reassuring when we spoke about this next step. He did the same with his book, he told me, as did other big books he’s worked on. “This is just the process,” he told me.

It’s overwhelming. It’s exhausting. It’s frustrating.

But it’s also incredibly exciting. I’ve seen leaps in my goals along with the leaps in my writing. A few months ago I just wanted to be published. I wanted a few people to read my writing and relate to it. Now I know I can make something really, really special.

With each draft, my imposter syndrome diminishes. I am putting in the work. This process has also shown me the importance of having an editor, and a good one.

If you’re on the fence about hiring someone for a developmental edit of your book, do it.

If you’re in the middle of rounds and rounds of edits, keep it up! The work you are putting in is important and meaningful. It will be worth it.

If you’ve gone through edits like this and come out with a finished book, TELL ME ABOUT IT! Send me motivational quotes! Send me book links!

 

by Becca Spence Dobias

Before and After: Developmental Edits

Before funding Rock of Ages, I was mostly ignorant of the editing process a book goes through before reaching shelves. When I thought of editing I thought of line editing and copyediting– going line by line marking misspellings and grammar mistakes, maybe providing some insight about characters and plots in a note at the end, but mostly correcting mistakes. There’s a whole other step, I learned quickly. The developmental edit.

This broad level edit looks at the story as a whole, making suggestions sometimes as sweeping as dropping or adding characters and chapters or whole subplots. Settings change, sometimes tense and point of view.

My own developmental edit letter was thrilling, which is not how I expected it to feel. In spite of huge suggestions (work really hard on my descriptive prose, drop several subplots, change the setting for parts of my story, age down my characters, etc.), I was so excited about my editor’s vision and could really tell they would improve my book immensely.

It’s been a challenge explaining to my supporters how I can be making such huge changes to the manuscript while still delivering them the book they signed up for. So here’s a before and after example that I hope will make this a little clearer, as well as provide authors who are nervous about their developmental edit some assurance that though it is a lot of work, your book will still be your own, just better!

A warning that there are some minor spoilers for Rock of Ages below, but none that should greatly affect your reading of the book.

Before:

“Becca,” Simon said, turning his gaze back to me.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too. Thank you for always being there for me. I really needed this.”
“I’m…in love with you,”  he said, hugging his the sleeves of his red flannel shirt, too warm for the 80 degree weather. “I always have been.”
“Simon,” I started.
“I would be so good to you,” he said.
“I know,” I said. We were silent. We looked at our drinks, Simon’s almost gone and mine still full.

After:

“Cass,” Simon started, and then pushed himself up to seated, staring over at the far bank, thoughtful. I watched him, lifting one arm to shield my face from the sun, which had emerged from behind a fluffy cumulous cloud.
Simon sighed.
Is he going to lecture me? I wondered. It didn’t seem like him, but I had no idea what else he could be saying.
“Cass, I’ve been in love with you for a long time,” he finally blurted. I propped myself on my elbows and let him continue.
“I know this probably isn’t the time to tell you this. I know.”
I sat up all the way now, listening.
“Cass, I would be so good to you,” he finished.
“Simon,” I started, not sure how to respond. I had never even felt a hint of romance with Simon. We had always been more like siblings than anything else, but here with him now, hearing this, I noticed for the first time how handsome he was. How he had lost the chubby cheeks that had made him look so much younger than he was for so long and was now lean and muscular from working in the gardens. I thought about his compassion and loyalty, caring for his family, how steadfast and dependable he had always been. He was so familiar, so safe, but at the same time there was something new and intriguing about him. He had changed since I’d been here last— he was more confident and determined, and I had to admit when I tried to see him from an outsider’s eyes, from the point of view of someone who was just meeting him now, for the first time, he was attractive, all of those things together were attractive.
You should kiss him, I told myself. And I almost did it. I almost leaned in and kissed him. It would have been like a movie— I could see it playing in my mind.
“Simon,” I said again, and his face perked, reminding me of a puppy. But that was it— I couldn’t see him from an outsider’s perspective. He would always be the kid I grew up with, regardless of who he was now. And he was always a part of here, of Buckhannon. And the weight of Buckhannon, of all of it, of my dad and my grandma and my mom’s dumb marriage, how she said she never loved my dad, and the drownings and the mine disaster and the little girl at the health clinic and the mom at Wal-Mart and Simon’s mom and brother and my fight with Tim and just all of it. Buckhannon was more than a place now— it was a weight, pressing down on me with all the heaviness of all of those awful things. And I wasn’t really sure, like Grandma had insisted I needed to be. And if I wasn’t really sure, if I didn’t get out now, I knew I never would. I thought of my job at Pow!, of LA, of good vegan food and blending into a crowd. I had a week left of family leave before I would have to tell Karen I wasn’t coming back to the office.
“I’m sorry, Simon,” I said, my face crumpling. “I think I have to go back to LA.”
His face mirrored mine, his eyes creasing at the corners and his lips turning down, but he nodded, holding his tears at bay, and lay back down on the rock. I lay next to him and grabbed his hand. Together, we watched the clouds for a long, long time.

 

In the first excerpt, I relied on the dialogue to convey all the things I said explicitly in the second excerpt. There are changes to the setting, additional descriptive prose, and more developed characters. You’ll also notice that I had to rewrite the passage mostly from scratch, but I hope this example shows how I can be rewriting most of the book while still keeping the heart of it! If you’re nervous about a developmental edit, I hope this makes you more excited! If your editor is good, you’re in for a lot of work but a book that is still yours, just a lot better!

Have any of your projects gone through a developmental edit? What was the process like for you?