Editing Is Like Raising Children...

GUYS I FEEL SO ACCOMPLISHED. I'VE ACTUALLY BEEN WORKING ON MY BOOK. YAY!!! I've probably spent 20 hours, give or take, since last Friday working on editing or on my characters or world building. I feel very accomplished. But nothing like what it will feel like when I actually finish my edits, I'm sure ;)

One of the things I've had to do this week as I've edited is make a few sacrifices. Which is sometimes hard, but you've got to do it.

In Gail Carson Lavine's (the author of one of my absolute favorite children's books Ella Enchanted - seriously, you are never too old for that book. It is just so good.) book Writing Magic (that was a pretty great Christmas gift, Thank You Grandma!), she makes this comment about the difficulties of having to cut something you love, which I happen to love (her comment about it, not the cutting something you love.)

"You will sometimes write paragraph of staggering loveliness, You will! Probably you already have. You’ll want to have those paragraphs tattooed on your forehead where everyone will see them.

Then you’ll discover that they don’t help tell your story. Do not do not DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT bend your story to accommodate your brilliant words.

Revising and cutting take courage and self-confidence. You have to believe that you will write equally brilliant prose again. And you will. There’s no doubt about it. And some of your new brilliant prose will have to be revised or cut. But some will actually fit your story. Hallelujah!"

In this particular case it's not brilliant prose that I had to give up, but when I wrote the book I was very determined that I was going to write in 3rd person limited from the perspective of my main character. And I had every intention of sticking to that.

On Thursday I decided that I was pretty much going to have to add the perspective of the second main character and alternate chapters by POV.

I was really dead set against that when I started writing it, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I really kind of needed to add it. Because of my main character's position for most of the book, she can't be involved in a lot of the most important stuff going on, she has to be told or figure everything out second hand. Which isn't that bad. I knew that and still was determined to write it with only my main character's POV.

Then I also realized that it was sagging/boring in the beginning and at the end because she wasn't involved in anything. And I couldn't get her involved in anything without sacrificing some important plot points.

Also, the change in one character at the beginning seemed way to out of the blue without that perspective change... Writing from only the perspective of one character has its downsides.

Downsides which I have discovered in the past few weeks trying to edit this thing that I'm trying to turn into a readable book.

Maybe it's going to be the complete opposite for you; you want to have multiple character's perspectives but discover what's best for your book is to only have one.

Really I feel like that's what editing's all about. It's about doing what's best for the book, regardless of what you might want to do. You created this thing when you wrote your first draft. You gave birth to your child. Now you have to raise it into its own person. And you know most of the ideas about what will be good for this child. Go to school, don't eat glue, don't play with knives, don't shove beads up your nose, eat vegetables.

But at the same time the child (in this case your book... and I guess since we're all under 20 kind of sort of us...) needs to grow up into its own person. So don't be afraid to see it growing into something you weren't quite expecting, or doing something differently than you thought it would. As long as it's not on drugs and spending time in jail, you're good!

... well that metaphor came out of no where.

In addition to deciding to add another perspective despite my reluctance, I also figured out a lot more about my antagonist's past and reasoning, which really really needed to happen. An hour sitting outside in the shade with a pad of paper, a pencil, and my thoughts. Did wonders.