This month, our topic is editing. Instead of talking on and on about the process I use for working with others, I’m going to babble about how Mel keeps me in line when it comes to my own work.

You’ve been warned.

What is your favorite method of editing?

Hitting send and then not seeing it again until six months or a year have gone by. Absolutely seriously. I send everything off to my editor, and she sets it all aside until I’m ready to go back into that place and work on it again.

I know I’m going to be asked this, so here goes. Why do I have to set things aside? I have a hard time staying in one world for two long. I stayed in New Bedlam for five years – five years – and couldn’t write anything else. It happened that I made myself absolutely tired of it. It’s part of the problem I’m having with editing the last anthology… I’m just so done with it all, and all of the pitfalls and waiting that came along with it. I’ve had to set it all aside, and though occasionally it peeks through into other stories I’ve been working on, it’s generally tucked away.

But, once I’m ready to work on something again, to head into that world, staff in hand and pack on back, we’re good to go for at least a two or three months. What I get back from her is a file filled with red lines, blue lines, yellow comment notices and an email loaded with snark. I take a week to recover (yes, a week) and then I work through them, one by one. Once I’m done that, either for or against each edit or suggestion, I send it back.

And I wait.

When she sends the thing back, it’s usually pretty clear, so I can go ahead and go over it backwards. I start at the end, and work my way back to the beginning of the file. I do this, so that the story doesn’t get in the way of the edits. If you’ve ever had that happen – where the story takes you and you end up twenty pages in with no edits done – you’ll understand how frustrating it is. So, there’s a big tip for y’all… start from the finish!

Eventually, through two or three or even five exchanges of the file, we get to the finished product. If Mel is feeling generous, she’ll tell me what she thinks of the work. More often than not, she doesn’t. I’m never sure I want to know, because I work in genres that are entirely out of her personal interest range. <|:^) What do you find the most in your editing?

According to Mel and everyone who has ever read anything of mine, I tend to go off in the middle of one thing, and head in another direction entirely. While that works for some things, it most certainly does not for most. Or maybe it’s just my wishful thinking that it works for some things.

Edits always track down typos and my horrible, horrible misuse of some words. It’s a whole condition, apparently. There, their, they’re; two, to, too; all words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. I have a hard time with those, and have had since 2003 after a medical issue cropped up. I’ve also had trouble with my biggest pet peeve in this globally connected world – American English vs. Queen’s English. I was literally pulled from my freshman English class in high school for earning the teacher’s ire over my refusal to let go of using proper, Canadian (Queen’s) English. He’d be writing notes on the board using both… and I’d flip out. *shrug* It became enough of a thing that he began marking me down and I was removed from the class for a better one.

Now? I don’t even pay attention anymore. I work with mainly American English because almost all of the authors I’ve worked with in the last decade have been American. It creeps into my own work, where colour has become color, and favourite has become favorite, etc. A lot of the red lines in my files are marking places where the UK dictionary that refused to be reset to American is taking offence at my choice of spelling. Mel doesn’t see them because her program didn’t have a stroke when she changed the dictionary of choice. I deal.

I also have a serious issue with punctuation. I either don’t use enough, or way overuse commas and semi-colons. I don’t care about the different between an en dash and an em dash usually, so they’re tossed around willy nilly. Mel’s most hated and my most loved mark is the ellipsis… My brain works in bubbles, and the ellipsis punctifies that nicely. No one wants to read them though, so she makes me take them out. Usually…

I’d love to show an example of the process, but I actually don’t have one right now. Somewhere, in the floating mass of files between a borrowed computer and my own, two flash drives and an external hard drive, sits my edits.

And I’m really not that worried about them. <|;^) For those of you who haven't checked it out yet, you've still got time to balls up and join the WriYe bunch… set your goal, join some fantastic challenges, and write write write!
<3 JL