Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: A Clear Second Look

If you're like me, you've heard this advice  time and time again.  Once you've finished a piece of writing, you need to set it aside for a while so you can take a clear second look at it.  This is excellent advice, advice I often give to my clients and students ... but it's advice that writers often don't follow (myself included).

My house is crazy-busy most days, and writing time is something I grab where I can during the week.  Weekends are a bit better, but between the laundry, baking, and general household chores that need to be done, I still don't get as much writing time in as I'd like.  This leads to a very time-starved kind of writing, where I'm scrambling to meet deadlines.

I start out with the best of intentions, but sometimes life just interferes.  This week, for example, my writing time has been limited because the youngest (of the broken arm) isn't cleared for outside activities until at least April 23rd, which means no afternoon daycare until at least then.  And without afternoon daycare, and with an increasingly stir-crazy four-year-old, I can honestly say I'm not getting much of anything done unless it's late at night after everything else is done.  Everything I've written this weekend (including this blog post) has depended on my clear second look hack.  Let's take a look, shall we?

A clear second look for the time-starved writer

If I know I'm going to have to edit almost in medias res, I do everything I can to have one writing session first thing in the morning (that's 5:30 around here ... ugh) and another after supper.  This leaves me close to 12 hours between writing sessions.  I'm not going to catch as much as I would if I had days or weeks to put my project aside and then come back to it, but I think I do a fairly good job following this method, and I think you'll be amazed at what you find, even using this time-crunched technique.

1. Split your writing / editing time into two sessions, with at least four hours between chunks.
2. Go do something that's not writing-related in the time between sessions.
3. When you're ready to edit, here's what you're going to do:
1. Print your project off and grab a highlighter or two. (I usually use two colours, one for errors and one for flow.)
2. Read your project aloud (to yourself, the dog, the cat, your imaginary friend ... doesn't matter who.  Just do it.  No cheating!)
4. As you're reading:
1. Highlight any grammatical, spelling, capitalization, and technical style errors.
2. Highlight any passages where flow is off.  These are places where transitions between sentences, ideas, and paragraphs don't quite work, and where characters might be doing one thing, then suddenly veer off in another direction.  
5. Take your marked copy back to the computer and make the necessary changes and revisions.  
6. Repeat the reading aloud process (steps 3 & 4) once more.
7. Cross your fingers that you've caught everything.  ;-)
8. Submit!

Monday Author Website: All Things From My Brain

This post is first in a series on author websites.  I''m interested in what works for readers, what keeps them interested in an author (and that author's works), and how authors can use their websites to attract and keep a diverse and lively audience.

All Things From My Brain

I found science fiction author Patrick Hester's blog (and website) while, ironically, looking for information on how to prevent Scrivener from doing odd formatting things when I cut and paste text from elsewhere into it.  I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find a number of good tips for using Scrivener, so I'll be sure to be returning.  

The addition of useful information (on whatever topic is relevant) is excellent, especially if it's updated frequently.  Patrick's Scrivener Quick Tips are a regular feature on his site, so I'll be sure to revisit Patrick's site for further tips.  And revisiting is certainly something that we want to see ... I've lost track of the number of cool sites that I visit once and never return to, either because they're static or because there's nothing there to draw me in and keep me returning.  

Of more interest, however, than Patrick's Scrivener Quick Tips, is the Writing Progress sidebar that Patrick has placed on the right-hand side of his blog, underneath the usual authorly stuff (Follow Me, links to his latest books, and an Other Stuff I've Written section).  

I quite like the idea of showing progress.  I've seen it used elsewhere, but think that it works particularly well for authors as it gives readers, waiting with bated breath for the next installment my their favourite author(s), an idea of how things are progressing, what to expect in the upcoming months, and when they might expect to see excerpts and complete works.  In some ways, it may even help keep us writers on track, knowing that we've got those numbers out there for readers to see.  

I like the graphical representation, rather than a list of dates, as it gives readers an at-a-glance view of what's coming next.  As a fan of authors who sometimes take a very long time to write (Jean M. Auel, Diana Gabaldon, and George R. R. Martin, just to name a few), I'd love to see this because then I'd know to expect something this year, or next, or even the year after.

The Habit of Writing

Most writing advice you read tells you that the best way to write productively is to schedule time to write.

It's good advice, but anyone with small children will tell you that scheduling anything, never mind time to write, is like trying to climb Mt. Everest backwards in flip-flops.

The key is not that you write at a scheduled time every day, but that you write every day.

It might only be 100 words, scribbled on the back of a grocery receipt, or it might be, on a good day, a couple thousand or more.

What's most important is that you're writing. And if all you're writing about is how tired you are, how grumpy the baby is, how messy your house is, that's fine. Regardless, you're putting butt to chair and pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).

It's developing (and maintaining) the habit of writing every day, no matter what, that is significant.

There will be days where you'll think you're too busy, too tired, too sick, too stressed, too whatever to write. Don't give in. Suck it up, take a deep breath, and write about it.