A few years ago I wrote a story for Big Bang. It was about a
psychic living in New Orleans who meets and falls in love with a US Marshal.
Anyway, my girlfriend, who is an editor, kept saying that I needed to revise it
and submit it to her publishing house and if nothing else see what the head
editor had to say about it.
So I sucked it up and did. Okay! Okay! My husband did! I had
the cover letter written and everything they wanted in the email and I just
couldn’t force myself to push the button to send. He walked up and asked if it
was done and I told him it was but I was scared to send it! So he reached
around me and hit the button. THEN he asked me where his balls- to- the wall
bitch was he loved and married. He finished that off by telling me to grow
a pair! I love that man!
They had great comments and useful suggestions but again I
needed to go back revise and re-edit. When I heard other writers talking about
writing as a process there was a certain part of me that thought that it
sounded a bit like bullshit. I mean you wrote a story right? Sure there would
need to be edits to make sure that commas were in the right spot but you got
your ideas out on paper, so to speak. What more is there?
There is stuff like story flow, characterization, and plot.
What I was told was I needed to make up my mind about my story. Was it going to
be a romance with action elements vs. an adventure with romantic elements?
I’ve gone back and basically re-wrote the story using about
50% of the original content. Using the suggestions that the head editor made, I
made sure that I got those suggestions in the story. For the record ANY writer
that doesn’t take the advice of an editor is a fucking idiot! These people aren’t
here to tell you WHAT to write just HOW to write better so your books will
SELL!
I guess the point of this particular blog is to say that
while the main part of writing may seem done it never really is. My particular
story was edited for Big Bang. Then it got edited for submission and now it’s
going through a third edit for a second submission. That’s not including the
edits that it is going to have to go through if it gets picked up by this
particular publishing group. Why so many edits? I am proud of my writing. This
is a tiny bit of me going out into the world and I want it to be the best it
can be.
You HAVE to go back
revise/ rewrite and for the love of god, trust your writing group to say that
yeah it’s good. Your writing group may like it; your editors will turn what is
good into something great if you listen!
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