Editing: Pushing, Shoving, and Shaping a Story

For the past few months I’ve been in constant editing mode for one book or another. Most recently I’ve been editing the three books that release this fall that are a part of The Fairest Maidens series. For those who enjoyed The Lost Princesses, the new series is a prequel and introduces some previously mentioned characters (like Queen Margery as the antagonist!).

The series has been a blast to write, and I’ll be doing a cover reveal a little later in the month! So stay tuned for that and more information about the books.

Since the rapid release schedule for The Lost Princesses worked out last fall, we’re releasing The Fairest Maidens in a similar fashion. A rapid release is fun, but in order to have the books all ready in close succession, I’ve had to adhere to a grueling editing schedule!

In fact, I’ve been eating, sleeping, and breathing editing.

Any time I get into editing mode, I realize that I’m really more of a first draft girl. I absolutely adore the process of writing the first version of a book. I could write all day and all night and never tire of it.

But editing is another matter altogether. Compared to the free-spirited, creative writing flow, editing requires an entirely different mind-set. And for me, editing is laborious, pain-staking, and incredibly time-consuming.

It’s like taking a fine-toothed comb through every page, every paragraph, every line of an entire novel. Such a task takes hours, days, even weeks of concentrated, focused energy. It’s draining.

And quite frankly, it’s also nerve-wracking. At the back of my mind I think, “I have to get everything right this time. No more fooling around. This is serious business.”

Because the fact is, if we don’t get things right during the editing phase, we risk disappointing our readers.

In some ways that fear is a good motivation.

It pushes me to keep going when I’m tempted to cheat on my editing, to skimp, to gloss over details, or to disregard depth.

It motivates me to ruthlessly chop whole paragraphs, whole pages, even whole scenes that I once thought were brilliant.

It forces me to let go of words, to see them as just that—words.

Editing challenges me to exert painful effort to push, shove, and shape the story into something better, something that whispers with the breath of life.

In this current publishing climate that entices authors to produce more content, we’re faced with the challenge of giving enough time and energy to quality editing. It’s all too easy to focus on more writing and publishing and to let the hard work of editing become the last thing on our to-do list.

If we as writers don’t take the time to brutally and viciously attack our stories (during editing), readers will attack the book later. But why give them reason to lash out? If we’re brutal with our books, then our readers won’t have to be.

Here are some of my favorite quotes on editing.  These show just how seriously most successful authors take the editing process.

“I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”
― Shannon Hale

“Editing fiction is like using your fingers to untangle the hair of someone you love.”
― Stephanie Roberts

“Editing is like pruning the rose bush you thought was so perfect and beautiful until it overgrew the garden.”
― Larry Enright

“Your first draft is a petulant teenager, sure it knows best, adamant that its Mother is wrong. Your third draft has emerged from puberty, realizing that its Mother was right about everything.”
― Angeline Trevena

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.”
― C.J. Cherryh

“I’ve found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living [crap] out of it.”
― Don Roff

What about YOU? How important do you thinking editing is?