Love's Sweet Home -An insight to my pitiful editing process

Love’s Sweet Home, besides being my second book is what I consider to be my state of mind. That’s where I put myself when I’m working on a new book or going through the dreaded end edits or re-edits. That’s where I’ve been for the past week and thought that my readers might be interested in how the process works for me.

So, I’m sitting here, minding my own business and new thought pop into my head. At my age, new thoughts are usually confined to my writing, or, a really funny thing. (I crack myself up a lot.) The new thought provokes me to scramble to my word program and open a new page. Staring at the blank page, I begin to type and what comes out rarely has anything to do with that new thought.

Many, if not most authors begin with an outline that lays out the characters, plots, background, research of facts if required, twists and turns, beginning, middle, and ending. Not me. You have to be very organized and patient to manage that, and I’m not either of those things. Thus, as a rule, I simply start writing and see what happens.

After I’m totally surprised by the story that’s unfolding, I start my List of Characters page. Here’s where I build my character, physical features, age, including birthdate, and their family and friends. I might not use some of these characters, but it fleshes out my main characters in my mind.

I write in sequential chapters, each chapter being a separate file, and only rarely will deviate to write a future scene and save it in the notes folder. Actually only twice. When the chapters are finished, I read them again, making changes or correcting them. This is edit #1.

When the manuscript is finished, I read it again from beginning to end, making what changes and corrections I feel is needed. Edit number 2. *Now, I’m not liking the story quite as much.*

At this point I send it to a friend and beta reader #1, to read it for story content and enjoyment. This is honestly a bit of an ego stroke for me. This reader loves everything I write and declares the book she’s just finished as her all-time favorite of all my books. She then points out errors and conflicts to me.

You got it, I read those parts and fix them. Edit #3. *Beginning to wonder if the time was well spent.*

Next, it’s off to beta reader #2. This reader reads it for the same reasons with the addition of grammar check and sends it back. Taking a deep breath and perhaps waiting for a few days (or weeks), I read through again, and accept or reject the suggestions written in the book by beta #2. This usually results in more writing to fix, add, or remove parts of the book, and tying up loose ends that I’ve discovered. Edit #4 is now a dark memory. *At this point, I sometimes discover that I write crap. Lack of faith in myself is setting in.*

Now it’s beta reader #3’s turn to tear apart the damn work I once loved. Their job is the hardcore editing of the book. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I write fast, often with total disregard of grammar and typing mistakes. *my computer likes to leave out letters that I’ve typed and I need to recheck every word. Sometimes I’m moving so fst that I don’t ntice them and I’ve added more to the book since the last beta reader checked it. Honest, that’s true and nt jut an excse.*

Here we go again. Re-read the chapters and make corrections. That means adding a bit more to the story. Edit #5. *What the hell was I thinking when I wrote this book? It’s a mess!*

This is where I walk away from it for a while. I need to soothe my bruised ego and stay away from the bloody characters that I’m starting to dislike intensely. When I return, I begin the process of putting the chapters together I read each of them again, correcting, changing, deleting, and adding before they are added to the others to be formatted. Edit #7. *Ugh!*

Once they are formatted, they are sent out for one last beta read and edit and then returned to me. *pulls on hair and growls*

Edit #8. Same routine, however, at this point far more may be added to the manuscript-- paragraphs and pages. Literally pages. A longer space between working on the book now, sometimes a month.

Edit #9. The finish line is in sight, but there is a minimum of 8 furlongs to go. Same song, 116^th chorus. Read, moan, change, read, groan, add more, sob, change the third paragraph on page 212 for the umpteenth time, pass-out. Having not tortured myself enough, I pick-up where I left off. Read, change… you get the idea. *runs around house with hair on fire*

Now I turn my attention to the cover. This is often the best part if I can find models who fit the description of the characters I have in my head.

Whew, it’s finally time to publish, and that means finding the correct file first. So, I have to read the damn thing again! *dirty word, dirty word, dirty word*

That’s edit #10. But in reality, it’s actually more than that, but it’s happened so many times I’ve lost count.

Oddly enough, the book can end up being published without a single beta reader reading the entire book. Tht’s jut betwen us,  k?

Publishing day! Hooray! And pretty much nobody buys it.

*Crap.*

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Happy reading.....