The Writing Process

My current manuscript is almost complete. To be fair, it IS complete. I'm in the line edit stage. Marty swears I haven't slept in a year. He may be right. 

Here's how the book writing process works: 

Write It

Write for days. Weeks. Months.  Let the characters consume your every waking thought. Say random things during social events which make you look crazy because you aren't paying attention to the conversation around you. 

For example, "What are you doing this weekend." Reply: "I wonder if I should have the cat jump from the refrigerator and on to the burglar's head instead of from the second floor balcony."  

Forgive your friends when they look at you like you aren't all there. Because, well, you aren't.

Beta Readers

Find people who like you enough to read your manuscript and who are willing to give you brutal advice. If they say things like, "that was a nice story," they aren't qualified beta readers. Generally these folks are also writers who are expecting you to return the favor.  

Rewrite It

Sort through the Beta Readers' comments and pick out the useful feedback. 

Not useful: I hate that you named your character Meredith instead of Mary.
Useful: Bearer bonds were discontented in 1982 and that negates the premise of your story. 

Not useful: There's no street in Lafayette Louisiana called, "Ashland."
Useful: Your serial killer's name is Hannah-Belle Lecter. You know there's a fictional serial killer named Hannibal Lecter right? 

Once you have everything sorted out, rewrite. Plan on living on almonds and M&Ms. Protip: the best way to stay productive is to keep your phone on do not disturb. 

Developmental Edits

Send your manuscript to your developmental editor who will point out areas to elevate your story. The editor will tell you useful things such as, "Your secondary character isn't likable and here are ways to fix that." And "You have two major plot holes which don't move your narrative and what about having your main character flee from Argentina instead of Uganda because he's South American?"

Rewrite It Again

This time, take all that information the developmental editor sends and squeeze it into your story. Remove irrelevant chapters and add in relevant scenes. Argue with your developmental editor why the rose garden chapter must be in the book and acquiesce to keeping it there when she insists it is absolutely necessary. 

Spend too much time on X (Twitter) with other writers who are also not fixing their edits. Remember you have other people in your life and once in a while and step outside and say hello to the world. 

Line Editing

Line editing is the fun process of going through a manuscript and finding issues in sentence structure, paragraph formation and word usage. For example, in my particular story, I used the word, "chessboard," three times in one paragraph. 

Generally during this phase, the writer (who is now partially psychotic from a lack of REM sleep) realizes one of their characters managed to go from point A to point B without any logical processes. Voila! They just arrived! And no matter how much they don't want to rewrite an entire chapter or two, the writer knows the story looks contrived unless this matter is resolved. 

Pretend like people still like you. Remember to do laundry, feed the dog and promise yourself you will sleep at some point. Protip: own more than one pair of compression gloves. Also remember nobody cares about your story as much as you do, and bone up on current events so you can talk about something other than what's in your imagination. 

More rewrites. And probably a Beta Reader or two at that point.  

Line Editors

Writers can--and should--have a line editor. However, prior to a line editor looking at their work, writers should have done their own line editing. Why? Because 1) the writer knows the story better and should be able to see if Hannah-Belle's brother is rolling his eyes when that is not an action he takes. He sticks out his tongue--that's his signature behavior. 2) A line editor won't catch everything anyway. 

Protip: keep a list of the manuscript's overused words. Currently my list is four pages long, front and back. I'll eventually dig out a thesaurus. Or rewrite the sentences. Another protip: writing "beside" instead of "next to" is a great way to lower the word count. However, sometimes "next to" is a better way to convey the moment.

Read it Over

And not only read it over, listen to it. More than once. Do this until you hate your story and think it is the stupidest drivel ever written and wonder why would anyone ever buy this garbage. 

Proofreader

Send the manuscript to a proofreader. Of course, you've already proofread it. But, I promise you missed a meaningful comma. There's a big difference between, Let's eat, Grandma and Let's eat Grandma. 

And to be fair, a proofreader won't catch everything. I've read plenty of books published by the big companies as well as books published by indie authors with proofreading errors. It happens. Writers expect it. Readers are outraged. Proof it yourself first anyway and forgive your proofreader. 

Anyway, The Redeemed is slated to be released this spring. Also, mysteries are hard to write.