Out in the World

No, not me, obviously. I don’t leave the flat.

I’m talking about my book. My words. I wrote it, I did some (possibly half-arsed, but I’ll come on to that) editing, and then I emailed it to other people to read!

I’ve sent the book to a professional editor, and to four people who have kindly offered to read the whole thing and then tell me what they think of it. Apparently I’m supposed to call them beta-readers, but all things considered I’m calling them Angels, because they Are.

*Alt text: Brightly coloured wooden letters on a brown rug.

I don’t know how much I’ll write about the editing process going forward, because frankly kids, there are days it’s totally soul-destroying.

My name is Jessica, and although I’m not a Lady, let me tell ya - fear isn’t the mind-killer. Editing an 86,000 word fantasy YA novel is.

I’m being a little bit over-dramatic here (I know, right, who’da guessed it?!), because there have been some pretty amazing editing days recently. Days where I’ve looked at the SHEER SCALE of what I’ve already achieved, and felt this weird, light feeling right behind my ribs. Pride, I think. I’m really bloody proud of this story! I’ve wanted to write it for sixteen years; the fact I’ve finally done it is incredible to me!

Of course, now I’ve hit a roadblock, which is this: I don’t know how to edit a bloody novel.

How would I have learned that skill? I’ve done a fair amount of creative writing education in my time; it was half of my undergraduate degree, all of my MA, and I’ve done a bunch of writing courses since then as well. I’ve had short stories published in anthologies, so I have been through an editorial process with a publisher a couple of times, but that was basically just agreeing to a bunch of tracked changes.

But… editing an entire book? That’s huge. No-one’s trained me how to do this. And it’s really, really hard.

It’s hard for a bunch of reasons. For example, I’m close to this story. I’m in the story’s bedroom, riffling through its sock drawer. So… it’s hard for me to see it objectively. I’ve tried; I took a 2 week break from working on it at one point so I could try to read it with fresh eyes, and I did notice some stuff to fix there, but I don’t know how effective I’ve really been.

I’ve wrestled a bit with tools like Pro Writing Aid and the new Editor function in Word to reduce errors in my spelling and grammar (although some of the things I’ve written ARE MEANT TO BE THERE, LEAVE ME ALONE).

I’ve even cut six whole chapters from the first half of the book and written new scenes that are more active and hopefully better all round.

So, when I say my editing’s been half-arsed up until now, it’s not through lack of effort. It’s lack of knowledge that’s got me screeching to a halt.

And that’s how I knew it was time to send it out into the world. I’m paying for a professional edit because I’m lucky enough that I can afford that, and because I think it will help me learn how to be better at editing myself for next time.

The Angels are important because I can’t read this story from fresh ever again. These people can, and I know they’ll tell me where it works and where it doesn’t

So, eventually, I’m hoping I’ll be able to get it better than it is already, with lots of notes and opinions to help me do what this picture suggests.

*Alt Text: Blue neon sign against a dark wall, reading “work harder”.