I’m so thrilled that my friend and client Julie Evelyn Joyce WON the $10,000 (!!!) Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in Romance for her book Steeped in Love. She received the award in Toronto back in June, and guys, I honestly couldn’t be prouder of her. She worked SO hard on this book, and I saw firsthand the amount of work she put into it. I was really impressed about how she self-edited in between edit passes with me, and she shared some of her self-editing strategies with me for this post.
First off, let me say that I know self-editing is seriously hard work, especially when you’ve just finished a story or you’re looking at it for the millionth time and you’ve been living in that world in your head for months and months (years, sometimes!). It feels like you’re almost at the end of a race and you can see the finish line, but then there’s suddenly still miles to go. And being objective about your own writing is basically impossible, but somehow you have to find a way to look at it with fresh eyes and tear apart your manuscript?
I wouldn’t blame you for being frustrated with that process. But the ability to self-edit is such an essential part of a writer’s toolkit, and can save you time, money, and the desire to throw your laptop across the room.
So here’s what helped Julie in her self-editing:
A great critique partner
Just because you’re self-editing doesn’t mean you have to do it all on your own! Julie’s friend and critique partner, Maggie Wells, was instrumental in giving her feedback from the perspective of a fellow romance writer. It’s so helpful to have someone you know and trust (and can vent to) when you’re working through your manuscript and someone who knows your genre and industry to read for beats, trends, and story structure. Just being able to bounce ideas off another person is huge when you’ve been working in solitary most of the time.
Having a critique partner can also give you some distance from your manuscript and let you see it through someone else’s eyes. A new outlook and someone challenging you on what you’ve included (or not included) in your story can nudge you in the right direction or a direction you didn’t know was possible.
Look at the big picture
Because Steeped in Love was the first book in a series, it was necessary to have a good overview of how the whole story worked on its own and within the larger series. Julie says, “I spent a lot of time looking at the bigger picture and the series as a whole and tried to give as much purpose to each scene as I could without giving too much away about characters we don’t really need to know too much about YET.” So zoom out and see how each scene fits within the context of the book and of the series.
Don’t get too attached
I’m the kind of person who’s like, “but…but…my words! My precious words! You want me to CUT them?” (Yes, I’m an editor. Irony is real.) Self-editing is no time to be precious about your writing; it’s time to be ruthless. The manuscript is not a static document; it’s going to evolve substantially as you edit. So you’re going to have to cut and you’re going to have to add. Julie removed chunks of her manuscript that weren’t working and added over 6,000 words in rewrites, “which was enough to give me hives at times,” she says. If it’s not gutting you to be deleting and re-writing during self-editing, you probably need to be doing more!
Take your time
You are going to go through some angst during this editing period – you’re tearing up something you worked so hard on! It’s overwhelming! So you do need to take breaks and work through the freak-out away from the manuscript. (Make sure you factor in this break time when you’re on deadline.) Again, this helps you get a bit more distance from the story so you can return to it with clear eyes.
Get an editor
I mean, obviously, I’m biased here, but yes, you need an editor even after intensive self-editing. As with a critique partner, you need someone who will look at your manuscript analytically. A critique partner tends to get very close to the story after a while (Maggie had read Julie’s manuscript a bajillion times by that point); that familiarity is really valuable, but after so many reads, you get manuscript fatigue and need a disinterested party to sharpen things. Julie says she didn’t know where to dig anymore, so I gave her a new perspective by coming into it without any preconceived notions. Going through the editing process with an editor rather than on your own can make big changes - Julie says that after one edit pass, "I was able to strengthen the conflict and rearrange scenes to put them in an order that actually fits the book. I was able to envision new scenes and omit ones that weren't working."
I first did a manuscript critique (an editorial letter assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript regarding plot, character, voice, setting, marketability) on Steeped, and then Julie and I had a Skype call where we talked out all of the stuff in the manuscript critique and figured out how she would proceed on her own. She then went back to self-editing and made changes to the MS based on my critique and our talk. Julie made the most of these edits by taking notes on the critique that I sent her, asking great questions during our chat, and then bringing all of that in to work on her manuscript on her own and with Maggie. This pulled all of the previous tips together: working with a CP, doing some serious overhauls of the MS, looking at the big picture, taking her time. When she was finished all her self-edits, I did a final copy edit pass.
There were maybe a couple of months in between the critique/Skype call and the final edits, during which time Julie was doing really thoughtful work in honing that manuscript. Two months may seem like a long time, but if it gets the manuscript where you think it should be, it’s time well spent.
Again, once you’re at the editor stage, it feels like you’re so SO close to that finish line…but you’re not there yet. Reflect on what the editor is suggesting, fight for the things you think are important, and go for another round of intense self-editing. You’re almost there!
Once Julie’s book came back to me for the final copy edit, it was in such great shape – award-winning shape, even! And I think a lot of that can be attributed to Julie’s diligence and persistence in the self-editing stages.
Go pick it up here: Kobo | Amazon | Amazon.ca | B&N | iTunes
Here’s the blurb:
Addie Mitchell is a pie-on-the-fly entrepreneur who’s finally ready to settle down in the big, empty house her late great-aunt Edna left to her. Frustrated with her lack of success in romance, Addie turns to another gift her great-aunt passed on to her—the art of reading tea leaves—to aid her in her search for the ideal mate.
Novelist Ethan Holtz is having a hard time sinking his teeth into his next project, but he finds Addie fascinating. Mainly for her ability to make her dates disappear in fifteen minutes or less. He can't help but eavesdrop on her dates in the local coffee shop, his writing haven, and soon finds himself taking pointers on what not to do from her failed suitors.
Though her methods seem nothing short of mad, he falls fast and hard for the pixie-haired pie-pusher. She thinks they’re all wrong for each other, but Ethan teams up with the tea leaves to prove they're so right.
Editing is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing – it’s a process that you develop for your own way of crafting your story. These strategies above were things that worked for Julie and hopefully will give you some new approaches to editing.