I’ve been editing my novel, George Florence, since the beginning of January.
I’ve been doing really well keeping up with my routine. I’ve been editing every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning. Saturdays I’m able to edit more and I go to the bookstore to do it sometimes.
I wanted to have the whole draft completed by January 15, but I still have about 50 or so pages to go. So I’m hoping to finish it by the 19 instead. That will give me one more Saturday to really work on it a lot. Because I don’t write or edit on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays.
I feel as though it’s always tough to self-edit. Once I finish the first draft the manuscript looks perfect in my eyes. Then when I start editing I realize how untrue that is.
A lot of my editing is rewording things because I tend to through random words in that don’t need to be there (you can tell I wrote the novel for NaNo). I reuse the same descriptive words over and over again because I don’t want to interrupt myself and get a thesaurus.
The draft I’m working on at the moment is technically the third draft, but I’m calling it the first draft.
The first-first draft was written in George’s point of view. The second draft was edited as George’s point of view. During all of this Lilah kept trying to take center stage.
I rewrote the novel in her point of view just to see how it would work and I have to say that it works much better. It’s a completely different story, which is why I’m calling it the first draft again.
I have a lot of editing notes that I’ve jotted down here and there to keep on the lookout in the next draft. I’m going to need to so some research before beginning the next edit phase.
First, I need to figure out the setting. I’ve gone back and forth between then being in a small town versus a big city. I believe they’re in a city, but it’s nameless and I don’t describe their surroundings much.
Second, I’ve always lived with my parents. I’ve never had my own house or rented an apartment before. My sister has so I’ve seen the inside of at least one apartment complex, but that’s about it. I don’t know anything about rent, leases, etc. Since a huge chunk of the setting if in an apartment building… Well, I should probably look into that.
Third, I want to make a map of Lilah’s apartment building, George’s house and firm, maybe the key areas of their city. Visuals are easier for me and than I should be able to describe things better from that.
Fourth, how does one become a private investigator? That’s a key part of the story, so I should probably figure that out.
Fifth, I have to do math. I dread that part because I clearly prefer English over math. But I do need to figure out a timeline of sorts. The year, the ages, figure out the robbery, figure out the murder, and so on. That part will be fun.
There are a lot of other things I need to research as well. Most of it pertains to the robbery and the murder as well as basic police procedure, autopsy reports, funeral homes, the works.
I have a lot to keep an eye out for when I edit the second draft.
What are your editing goals for your novel?
