Take Your Time and Do it Right

As head coach of UCLA's basketball team, John Wooden won ten NCAA national championships in a twelve-year period. Well known for the short inspirational messages he used to encourage his players, some consider the above quote to be one of his finest pieces of advice.

How can we apply Wooden's advice to our writing?

Focused on completing a project and submitting it to a publisher, writers can forget the importance of taking the time to do it right — yours truly stands guilty as charged. Expect cruddy first drafts. We frequently hear, just get it out. While that is true, don't rush editing.

Not all writers are fans of editing. You're forced to kill your darlings, tighten your prose, remove passive voice, switch out weak adverbs for strong verbs, and a litany of other instructions that threaten to make your head ache. Self-editing is a learned art form. I'm still in class. It's way more rewarding to edit someone else's manuscript.

Speaking of working with editors, this might shock you: if your editor asks you to go over a chapter for the third time, it's because she believes so much in your story she wants it to be even better than you think it can be. The word choice, the sentence structure, and the way a chapter ends can be the difference between a reader turning the page and putting a book down unfinished. An editor is part of a team dedicated to preparing your manuscript for publication.

So, what can an author do to help?

Don't rush self-editing

My technique is:

• Take the cruddy first draft and pretend it doesn't exist for a month.
• First round of edits: read it aloud to pick up inconsistencies and typos.
• Second round of edits: improve word choice, correct grammar, and reduce repetition.
• Third round of edits: focus on punctuation to make sure it's right.
• Ignore the final draft for a day or two and then read it aloud again to make sure you didn't miss any glaring errors.

Write a great query letter

The dreaded query letter. Can you imagine my eyes rolling into my head? Writer's Digest has a great list of dos and don'ts for this. You can find it here. Two hundred fifty to three hundred fifty words doesn't leave a lot of room for error. Practice makes perfect.

Once your manuscript is accepted, be open-minded

Publishers understand this is your baby. When a publisher accepts your manuscript, they see its potential. Be open to your editor's suggestions. Step back and be objective. Embrace the process, even when it seems to take a long time. That time will be well worth it!

Cheryl C. Malandrinos is a freelance writer and editor. She is the author of four children’s books including, A Christmas Kindness, released by 4RV Publishing. A blogger and book reviewer, she lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters. She also has a son who is married. Visit Cheryl online at http://ccmalandrinos.com and her children’s book blog at https://childrensandteensbookconnection.wordpress.com

My Favorite Things About Editing

It's almost December, so I am definitely feeling in the holiday mood. The Sound of Music is my favorite movie. One of its songs, "My Favorite Things," is often played around the holidays, so I thought I would use that theme to discuss my favorite things about editing.

Editing Makes Us Think

I don't edit as I go. My goal: get to the end as quickly as possible. That first draft might wind up dreadful, but it's done. When I sit down to edit, the thinking cap comes on. Is this the best word? How many words are overused? Does this sentence clearly communicate what I meant? What can I cut? Where should I add? It's the deep thinking of editing that makes the story stronger.

Editing Helps Us Better Understand Characters

In the world of fan fiction, if you write a storyline that doesn't stay true to a character, you'll hear about it. A reader of one of your stories might not take kindly to sweet ole Ida, who they have adored for twenty chapters, pushing the minister down the stairs or cursing up a storm when she slams her finger in the door. The reader will be scratching her head and wondering what the heck happened.

Editing gives you the time to consider the actions of your characters. In the middle of a situation, do their actions make sense? Take time to understand why they do what they do. If they are acting in an unusual manner, what has happened? Will that character's response be realistic to the reader?

Editing Helps with Fact Checking

As a writer of historical fiction, accuracy is important to me. If it's Christmastime in America -- before fancy wrapping paper was regularly used in the United States -- my character better not be opening a gift wrapped in shiny paper with a glossy bow on it. Writers can tweak history here and there, but readers of this genre have an expectation that proper research has been performed. Should the flow of writing be stopped to fact check? Who knows what rabbit hole that will lead you into. Highlight areas that need fact checking, and use the editing stage to iron out those details.

Hopefully, this has shown you some great advantages to the editing process. What do you enjoy most about editing? What are areas you struggle with?

Cheryl C. Malandrinos is a freelance writer and editor. She is the author of Little Shepherd, A Christmas Kindness, Macaroni and Cheese for Thanksgiving and the recently released, Amos Faces His Bully. A blogger and book reviewer, she lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters. She also has a son who is married. Visit Cheryl online at http://ccmalandrinos.com and her children’s book blog at https://childrensandteensbookconnection.wordpress.com

Copy Editing the 4RV Way

by Vivian Zabel  

Dilly by Rena Jones, created by Ginger Nielson

         Once an author finishes his manuscript, which has been accepted by a publisher, has been edited, and is ready to layout, to be designed, the designer provides a layout, then a proof. 

   The designer does not edit, just formats/layouts the text after importing the manuscript from a Word document. Therefore, the way the document is written at that point, any leftover warts and all, is what appears in the InDesign (idd) file. The designer attempts to tweak paragraphs to rid the design of orphans and widows and hyphenated proper nouns, but sometimes tweaking doesn’t work. At that point, copy editing begins.

            Let’s look at the duties of the designer first. After the material is imported into an InDesign file, the designer places the text on the pages with the correct margins, headers and page numbers, chapter and section headers, indentions, and other formatting issues, a process which takes hours and sometimes days. After everything is “placed,” he/she tries to tweak paragraphs that have orphans or hyphenated proper nouns, to eliminate the problems. If any pages have widows at the top, the designer again tries to tweak the paragraphs with widows so that the widows are gone. 

            The designer does not edit. If something does catch her eye, she may fix the problem if something simple like a misspelled word, incorrect punctuation or grammar, or such. However, her job is not to edit, and she is not expected to do any editing.

            If she sees widows, orphans, or hyphenated proper names that she can’t tweak away, she often will highlight them in a different color for the author and editors to see. That doesn't mean she will find all of them.

            After finishing all layout problems to the best of her ability, she creates the idd file into a PDF proof to send to the author and editors. 

            Authors are to list problems and solutions in a Word document to send as an email attachment to the designer as follows:  the PDF page number of problems/errors as found in the proof;  indication where the problem is found; and the corrected material. For example, if I find a missing word on the first page of the proof, I would list, in a Word doc, the following:
PDF 1     fifth complete paragraph which begins Mary ran toward …  Problem is  
              the word “doesn’t”  is left out of  Jack sees her. Should be
              Jack doesn’t see her.

            Also, any orphans, widows, or hyphenated proper nouns will require the author re-write a sentence or even a paragraph or part of a paragraph to solve the problem. 

            At this point, a vocabulary lesson is needed.                         widow: a group of one or two words (may be three very short
                             words) left at the top of  a page as the end of a paragraph
                             from the previous page. 
                        orphan: a word that ends a paragraph but is on a line by itself.
                        hyphenated proper noun: spacing causes a proper noun to
                              be hyphenated with one part of the  noun on one line and
                              the remainder on the next line.

            The author (or editor, if helping) needs to find any and all remaining errors or problems, including spelling, grammar, missing words, words in wrong order, punctuation, or confusion as well as those listed above.

            The designer and author may have to go through several proofs before one is approved by the author as being as close to being perfect as possible.

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