Editing, over and over

I have a new book being released and a new manuscript I’m submitting.

First off, with a new book being released by my publisher soon, the process of editing, second edits, proofing, then final edits make an author really fine tune their work.

I re-read my work just after the proofing stage, and again when I have the Advance Review Copy. Strangely with this new novel, even after my own eyes have read it many times, and various other editors have gone through it, I found two typos we all missed.

Of course this is common. We see mistakes all the time in published books as all editors and authors start blinding themselves to paragraphs they’ve read often.

Some last minute rewrites were made on my new book.

The proof reader had a valid point about a scene slowing down the pace of the novel in the second last chapter. Plus the motivation of the characters didn’t make sense in this now deleted scene. But it meant creating new paragraphs to replace the scene, then taking important dialogue from that scene into the last chapter.

I get nervous doing last minute rewrites as I fear they’re not as polished as the rest of the book. This is where reading the Advance Review Copy comes in handy. I had both an epub and pdf, but read the epub on my phone.

Seeing your work formatted and in a different font tricks your mind into thinking you’re reading something fresh. The prose sunk in. I gave my publisher four minor changes to make the prose flow better, then sat back relaxed knowing the product being released is the best it can be.

Then there’s the work I’m submitting.

It’s not a work my publisher would be interested in, so I’m on the submission bandwagon. It’s been a while. I’m doing a staggered submission process where I choose three publishers, submit, wait, review all components of that submission, then choose three more publishers.

But I sent an earlier version of the manuscript to the first three before my Beta Reader gave me notes. And in the process of making my second round of submissions, one of the publishers had brilliant advice on writing a 300 word synopsis on their website. So this second round of submissions has the best version of the manuscript so far, and the best synopsis.

And yes, I’ve had one rejection and two ‘our response time has passed so don’t hold your breath’ from my first round of submissions.

Even today I was going to rewrite a scene.

Until I read it out loud and realised it didn’t need fixing, although the day before I deleted a paragraph to stop it sounding overwritten.

All of my works in progress go through many drafts. I re-read them after many months of not looking at them, before I begin the next round of edits and rewrites. So well before editors go through them, I’ve revised over and over.

And if you’re like me, you never read your own books when they’re published. Nothing would be worse than spotting a mistake.