Read, Write, Edit, Feedback, Repeat
The first draft has its challenges – confronting the blank page and overcoming it. Moving forward, word by word left foot following right foot, from the germination of an idea to the final reveal of the killer – it’s a slog. I’ve often reflected that writers don’t choose to write – they just can’t choose not to. The second draft, for me, is easier. As you recover familiar ground you easily recognize the awkward phrase or the character whose name you inexplicably changed on page 102 because you tired of the original name. In the second draft, tidying things up, I usually come to feel confident that I am on the right road.
“But what of those among us who decide to go the self-publishing route? If we don't have access (or budget) for a professional editor, what is one to do?”
There might be additional revisions, but usually that’s it for formal drafts until an agent or an editor at the publishing house has gone over your carefully crafted manuscript with a fine tooth comb and pointed out to you all the errors you missed. And you WILL miss many errors – you are just too close to the manuscript. Jane Austen described her books as her children, and we all know that one’s eyes can be closed to the flaws of one’s own child… so getting additional eyes to review your child is essential.
If you are me, you are fortunate to have a cadre of dependable readers to call upon who will each bring something unique and helpful to the review and editing of your book.
For me, the first critic is my wife. If she likes it, I am ecstatic. And she has an excellent eye not only for the incorrectly placed apostrophe, but also the repetitive vocabulary (in my forthcoming book she pointed out that absolutely every car “skidded to a halt” at the entrance to a property that figures prominently in the plot). Moreover, she has an ear for character and quickly got to know my characters and helped me recognize when I had let one of them behave out of character. Most importantly, she blends her eagle-eyed attention to grammatical detail with a frank but caring delivery that doesn’t break an author’s sometimes fragile ego.
Once I have made revisions based on her counsel, I turn not to a writers group but to a Readers Group. Writers are excellent at critiquing writing, but my primary audience is composed not of people who write books, but people who read them. My Reader's Group includes two avid readers of mysteries, an avid reader of anything printed on paper, a person who does not read any fiction at all. Their varied insight, focused on different aspects of the book, from plot to characterization to grammar to vocabulary.
I wait with baited-breath for the feedback of each member of my Readers Group. Once their critiques are in it will be time to do the formatting and final proofing for publication… and then I will be waiting with baited-breath for the reviews of the reading public!
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