Thursday, April 28, 2011

You Tell Me

Okay friends, I need your input. I'm about to go to line editing with OF POSEIDON in a couple of weeks, but I don't want to be so erratic with my blog posts. My goal is to have a batch of ready-made posts for your reading pleasure during this time, some cut and paste goodies I can write in advance. When I sat down to make a list of topics, I felt a little silly, with three things on the list and all. So I thought I'd ask you. What questions do you have about the publishing process? Is there anything that concerns you right now? What do you need help with the most?

You tell me. Ask and you shall receive...

P.S. Tomorrow, stop by http://authoraghoward.blogspot.com/ for my author interview. Anita Howard is my gracious hostess, and she is one of US--a slush pile find with an awesome novel on submission to editors AS WE SPEAK! :) And while you're over there, check out her book trailer!

Saturday, April 9, 2011

I'm Baaaaaack!

Sorry for the long silence--I had to ask for a tiny extension on my revisions due to a surprise root canal. I love surprises. Just not when they're root canals... Soooo. About the revisions (which are offically completed and turned in). I know I mentioned before about the 4 page editorial letter. I thought it was mostly minor issues, tweaking, re-touching. But when I went back through the MS with fresh eyes, I realized it was major revisions, and some of those not even in the editorial letter. In a way, I performed a root canal on my MS. It was still mostly my original, but I gutted it and re-made it, only better and stronger than the original. I cut 18k words and wrote 17k words to replace those. I cut scenes I loved, but they did nothing to move the plot forward. Then I replaced them with scenes I loved more, scenes that worked like a donkey for the plot. And I'm really, really excited about it. I wanted to share something I found very helpful in this process. I created an excel spreadsheet to document my revisions. The left colum indicated the chapter number. The middle column told a short synopsis of the content of each chapter. The right one indicated what needed to be changed in that chapter, if anything. As I went through and revised, I replaced what needed to be changed with a description of what actually changed, and I notated the page numbers for reference. This will help you when you turn in your revised MS--outlining all the changes for your editor saves him/her a big chunk of time for the re-read. What about you? What editing advice do you have? I'd love to know!