Is September almost here? Wow, where did the summer go? But I’m really looking forward to fall. The cool breezes, the colorful leaves, Halloween.
I’ve been hard at work, reading through Fire Wizard before I send it out to beta readers. Here’s the problem. I’m finding little typos and places where I want to reword stuff. But I’m not finding any major changes that need to be made yet. I know when the love scenes (NOT sex scenes) come up, I’ll need to expand a bit on those. But the actual story up to this point seems pretty tight. I always worry about this because everyone always talks about revisions and rewrites, etc., so I think I’m supposed to do those, too. But I rarely have to do any major overhauls. Which makes me wonder if I just don’t see those things. And, yet, my two MAIN beta readers are VERY good authors, and they don’t usually suggest anything TOO major, either. And I respect their opinions a LOT. Have I just been doing this so long that my first draft is already pretty tight? Is it because I’m an “edit as I go” writer? We are told not to do that, but here’s what I usually do. I don’t edit the chapter I’m working on. But before I start a new chapter, I always go back to the chapter before and make changes that need to be made, while that part of the story is still fresh on my mind. Maybe that’s why the first draft is close to ready. Because I’m already tweaking it while I’m writing it. I just don’t know. Maybe experience plus continual tweaking is the reason. I hope that’s it instead of me just being too clueless to see I need to fix stuff. Again, I trust my beta readers, and they would tell me. And who knows, maybe they WILL find something that needs major overhauling in this one. (I hope not, LOL.) We’ll see. I can’t wait to see what they think.
What about you? Do you just spit out words as fast as you can and THEN do revisions, or do you constantly tweak as you go like I do? (That doesn’t mean I don’t sprint sometimes, but I would go back and fix everything the next day, LOL.) I would love to know if there’s anyone out there like me or if I’m just weird. Really, really weird. LOL
lauralynnelliott.com 
I was just thinking about this today and planning to write a blog post about the “rules” I break — including that I’ve learned to go ahead and edit something when I think about it. Not a word here and there, but story or character issues. I’ve heard what a big no-no that is, but it honestly keeps me from going down the wrong path so far that I can’t easily get back. We’ll see what that all means for the book I’m working on now!
Congrats on your progress! Have a great week.
Exactly. If you fix something right then, I think it’s easier to follow the thread and not get confused later. I still have to fix issues sometimes that I missed. Like the kind of vehicle someone drives which changed somewhere in the manuscript. Oops. But it does makes things clearer when you can continue on the right path.
Also, I can be reading another book and suddenly realize something I need to do in my own. The time to fix that is usually NOW.
Hey, every writer is different. Every story is different. True, Soulless went through a major overhaul on the second draft, but it only required taking out a few chapters and putting in new ones, but it was a book less than a year in the making. Then look at Serpent in a Cage, which is ten years in the making and is on its third complete rewrite. Then there’s Madeline, which is my current WIP, and I have a feeling that one is pretty much going to the presses as it’s being written now. So who knows? The experience could definitely be a factor, too, though. The more you do something, the easier it becomes. I wouldn’t worry about it. Sometimes, we actually do hit the target on the first shot.
Yeah, I’m pretty good hitting the target with my .357, too. LOL (Sorry, I’ve been discussing guns a lot today.)
I had an author friend email and say she was the same way, but she didn’t want to say it in public. So maybe I’m not alone. And you’re right about each book being different, too. Some kick my butt, and some are easy.
I’m a pantser… because of that, I reread what I’ve written in between writing (if I’ve had more than a day or two away), so I can get back in the groove. By doing so, I’m constantly editing and reworking things. My betas and edits usually are catching small things or inconsistencies I’ve missed. So I think you’re doing what you need to be doing.
High five!
Yay, someone like me! 🙂 I’ve always been a pantser, but I’ve kind of embraced a hybrid approach. Sometimes when the plot gets complicated, I need a little bit of a plan. Then, many times, that plan goes out the window when I think of something better. 🙂
I think your method of editing as you go saves you a lot of rewriting and revisions. It’s a good method and one I normally don’t do, but after looking at a recent first draft of a short story I wrote, I’m thinking I need to change my writing routine.
I think we all have to figure out what works best for us. Honestly, if I didn’t edit some as I went, I would REALLY dread edits at the end.
If something needs to be fixed, I have to fix it before I move on. If the dialogue in a chapter feels off or the pacing is wrong, I’ll stop and fix before I move on. I try to write without stopping, but I find that edit-as-you-go tends to be the way I write. So you’re not alone.
I’m finding there are many of us. 🙂
I hate rewrites and revisions. Once I’m done with the first draft, I only want to do a light edit. While I’m writing (even when I sprint), I go back and redo the scene before I move on to the next one. Or, if I am doing a scene and realizes it doesn’t match up with a previous scene, I’ll drop everything and go back to the previous scene to clean it up. The last book I finished (His Convenient Wife) was a major pain because it seemed like I was cleaning up scenes every other day since the characters kept shifting on me. I was also writing the book out of order, which didn’t help. But this story didn’t come to me in a linear fashion like stories usually do.
I was super annoyed with the book while I was writing it. But now that it’s finished and I am not doing any major revisions or rewrites, the pain was all worth it. LOL It’s so much easier to edit the entire first draft when you only have light revisions to do.
Some books are just harder than others, aren’t they?
I write the draft, and try not to fix anything but typos. My reasoning – I usually need time away from a story I’ve just completed before I really know what’s going on, and I like to keep a lot of projects going at once. They tend to feed on one another…
I’m currently in the midst of my first planned revision. The novel is undergoing major changes – the addition of characters and a pretty major subplot that ratchets up the tension.
To be fair, the rough draft was written as a NaNo in 2011, and I wrote 38K of mostly biography before I found the story – and then, that was split into two novels, a fan fiction and this original fantasy.
I’ve learned a tremendous amount since then, and I have a vision of a duology series (half offered online for free), that I didn’t have when I started writing.. I know this rewrite will be labor-intensive, but I see it a as something like an archaeological ecpedition, and I’m loving the adventure of it…probably a good thing, because I’ve got 5 queued WIPs which were also almost wholly pantsed waiting in the wings (I’m hoping to get a bit faster and more efficient at it as I move though them.
I’ve also got two more (well, one, and the one I’m moving into the final quarter of drafting) that are hybrids. They’ll need fairly extensive pruning, I know, to remove tangents (but the tangents often take me to wonderful places, even when they don’t stay…). There are inconsistencies to get squared away…but they’re cleaner drafts, and I have rough plans to work from, which I can improve more easily than I can create whole new ones for these six utterly pantsed WIPs.
And then there’s last year’s NaNo. I spent the time to create a rather comprehensive but still flexible plan, and it REALLY paid off for me. I wrote 122K in a month, and it is the cleanest, most complex, and most coherent WIP I’ve ever produced. The middle still sags a bit, and there’s a minor tangent or two- but I’m really, REALLY looking forward to revising it, because I KNOW it’ll be a cakewalk compared to the others!
I have no intention of ever writing another unplanned novel, thank you! I may change and tweak the plan straight through, but I’ll have one.
I can’t imagine that editing as I go would work with my particular brain, but I tend to look askance at rules, in general. Rules are limiting, and I prefer possibilities.
I don’t think any way in inherently better or worse in and of itself- it’s just that each of us has a way that FEELS right, and others that don’t.
If you can edit as you go and get clean first drafts, that’s wonderful. If I prefer meandering and letting things percolate before I dig through, that’s equally wonderful –
The goal is the best story we can offer – the path taken seems a matter of preference and style.
And WAHOO on being nearly beta-ready! =D
Wow, you’re making my head spin with all the stuff you have in the works!
There’s no right or wrong way. There’s just OUR way, each one of us. Whatever works, that’s what we do. 🙂