Light a lot of writers (and maybe all of them), I hate editing. I do it, because copy-editing is expensive (and rightly so), but I would much rather sunbathe naked on a bed of hot coals.
For those who aren't writers themselves, editing a novel is like a long string of four-hour meetings with yourself during with your boss drones on and on, but keeps a watchful eye so that no one can fall asleep. You play with your Blackberry under the table or start folding your meeting agendas into paper footballs to pass the time, but every time you miss a bullet point, another meeting gets scheduled to review the same section of the budget.
Imagine doing this every day for a month. Now ask me why I never complain about the rates for copy-editing, which by my estimate are well shy of where their truth worth should by all rights be valued.
For one, it should be measured in gold and precious gems, not humble dollars.
But, editing is a necessary part of getting any novel from your own eyes to the viewing public. Well, 'necessary' is perhaps not the word. After all, I understand Dan Brown has been very successful--
I apologize, that was low. Let us refocus:
Copy-editing aside, plot editing, especially in the full-speed-ahead environment of NaNoWriMo, becomes a more tangled and messy process. And it's the precursor to copy-editing. It involves endless hunt-and-peck each time you change something late in the story to ensure that all the points, clues and pieces leading up to that seemingly innocuous change still make sense.
Much like the proverbial butterfly, a little wingbeat sends ripples out for miles in every direction. Your job is to get the unsuspecting islanders out of the way before the hurricane roars through.
That's why, this year, I plan on getting ahead of the collapse and leaving myself a veritable breadcrump trail with the confidence that I will be walking these lines again when I change something major halfway between here and Thanksgiving.
Normally, in editing, I read the story through once as a reader and simply highlight or comment on the different key elements. Character descriptions. Clues to the overall plot. Turning points. Unsung side characters who may house hidden potential. I try to circle all the little holes I willfully leave myself in case I have to come back through and fill them with something later.
This year, I'm going to so as I go. While writing the story, I will annotate the different character description points, key turning points, clues and the like as I write them, before the story itself is even vaguely finished. With luck, it will make it easier to traipse back through the work later and find the pieces that the wings of my later butterflies will have cast astray.
I'm using MS Word this year, as I often do, though OpenOffice Writer has the same potential: virtual highlights. In this case, I'll likely use comments instead, as they make for an easy margin with markers at each key point, much like those little thing Post-it strips in a virtual sense.
My hope, however premature, is that these little notes won't just help with the editing process to come. My hope is that they will help with the development of the story. They will be mile markers on the road map of the plot as it translates from outline to manuscript, making it easy to see if any have fallen astray, and to get a feel for the pacing on the work as a whole, like the bars between measures in a musical score.
All that remains now is to see whether I have time enough to pay any attention to them as I fly past in a hurried rush to finish the scene.
I don't expect copy-editing to get any easier. Reverse line-editing (reading sentences start to finish, but reading them in the reverse order relative to each other) remains the best, if still agonizingly tedious way to do that.
If I can at least cut the time it takes to finish the plot and story edits, however, I can get the copy-editing done sooner, and may, in the end, complete and entirely different feat from the 30-day draft.
The 90-day completed manuscript.
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