Simple Tricks for Editing Your Manuscript's Prose--Five Steps from Pro Editors That Make a Scene, Chapter, Book Shine

Books enter our lives in distinct stages. 

First comes the wild idea.  It grows gradually in your creative self, until it feels like an elephant in the corner of a room, not letting you ignore it.  Until you're compelled to get it on paper.

You write for months or years.  You now have a huge file on your hard drive or piled on your desk.  You rework it, get feedback, rework some more.  Hate it, love it, feel neutral.

Finally, you're ready for revision.  Revision is essential; we know that professionals spend most of their book journey on this final stage.  But if it's our first book, how do we figure out what needs attention?  It reads OK, our writers' group loves it.  But we still sense the book isn't ready to go out to agent or editor. 

Without a plan, a map, revision can feel endless.

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Steps to Self-Publishing: Is It the Choice for You?

In my thirty-plus years as a published writer, I've released my books in three ways: 
1. finding an agent and selling my manuscript to a major publisher
2. selling my own manuscript (sans agent) to a small press
3. self-publishing

Each has advantages and disadvantages.  We'll explore them here so you can make an educated choice about your own book.

Agented Manuscripts
My first agent signed me when I was a brand-new writer.  Because I knew virtually nothing about publishing, my agent educated me.  He had his "stable" of editors at the big houses and successfully pitched my books for me.  He looked over the publishing contracts and corrected any problems, so I got better rights and more money in my advance.  For the years my books were in print, my agent tracked everything, from submission to publication and eventually to serialization. 

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Unusual Procrastinations, "Watering Dead Wood with Tears," and Other Ways to Stay Hooked on Your Writing

After thirteen books, I know all about falling out of love with my own writing.  I recognize my own stall-outs and tricks.  I've created a thousand exercises and ways to combat this, accept it, keep writing anyway.

This week I discovered an unusual procrastination--one that worked so well, I wanted to share it with you.
Writing a book is more of a marriage than a date.  You're in it for the long(er) haul.  You need to stay hooked.  Or else one of you--probably the book--will pull a Thelma and Louise.

Acedia--A New Take on Procrastination
On Monday I begin teaching at the beautiful and creative art school on Madeline Island in Lake Superior, where I spend three glorious weeks each summer and fall.  In these retreats, we do many different exploratory exercises, all designed to give the writer a new perspective on the book.   I've been exploring a new exercise called a River Chart.  I introduced my stubborn novel-in-progress to it this past weekend, and they hit it off really well.

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Finding a Balance between Acceptance and Rejection--Seesaws in the Writer's Life

At a writer's conference recently, I sat in the audience and listened to a panel of four agents.  They fielded questions and then began to speak about the of-so-difficult process of acceptance and rejection.  Expect rejection as part of the journey, they said, in many different ways. 

Why does an agent "fall in love" with a book?  Why doesn't she or he?  What is the magic that makes the process work for everyone?

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Complex Structures and Multiple Storylines--Authors Are Experimenting with Next Steps for Their Books

Have you noticed the trend?  Books are getting more complex--not just in their storylines but also in their structures.  Could be a reflection of how our brains are changing (see The Shallows:  What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr).  Or our desire to reinvent literature once more.

But what's best for your book?  Are you eager for the edge in structure or storyline?  Here's a short history of where we've been and a forecast of where we might be going, with some ways to analyze where your book fits into it all.

Multiple Narrators Become Woven Structures
Only fifteen years ago, when Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible was published, we were awed by a story told from six or seven viewpoints.  Each member of the Price family contributed their own version of the voyage from Georgia to be missionaries in the Belgian Congo. 

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Privacy and Alone Time: Why Creativity and Good Writing Depend on These

Summer is a great time to discover new books.  A colleague recommended Quiet:  The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain, for its unique views on creativity and the need for alone time to nurture that creativity. 

Alone time is a tricky subject.  It hints of antisocial behavior, even selfishness, but I find it's absolutely essential for my sanity, balance, and creative spark. 

Cain's book gave me enough scientific backing to accept the idea that I need to be alone a good portion of each day to hear myself and my story.  I'm not alone in that need, either!

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Why Do Creative People Fear Routine? Getting Over the Internal Obstacles to Actually Finishing Your Book

My ideal writing day is open-ended.  I have nothing I even have to get dressed for.  I can be alone, noodling around my writing space, enjoying silence and letting my characters and topic talk to me without fear of interruptions.  I get to design my own play space and time. 

In this ideal world, the creative flow is strong.  It's unimpeded by plans, structure, or routine.  I write often and well, I never encounter doubts or blocks, and I produce amazing amounts of work and feel completely refreshed by the process.

A writing life without routine--that's what most of us dream of.  Because it's really the routine--the obligations and the demands--that gets in our way, isn't it.  If we were free to just write, we would.

Right?  Not really.  A great fantasy, but rarely true.

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Placing Setting Details for Best Effect-- The Danger of Frontloading Your Story with Description

One of my online students is writing a very good mystery.  He has plotted it well, and he's working on developing the characters.

Last semester in the twelve weeks of my online class, I focused him on pacing.  What is the best pacing for a mystery?  What elements keep the momentum going, the tension high?  What drops tension, and even distracts the reader?

I asked him to study different aspects of pacing, such as dialogue, character description, and setting.  How is each used for best emotional effect?

This writer has improved tremendously in the months we've worked together.  But he still can "frontload" his chapters with too many setting details.  I wanted him to see how they slowed the pace of his story, and begin to choose the specific details that wouldn't derail his readers. 

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Jonathan Odell on Living Out of the Imagination

I'm so pleased to have Jon Odell, author of The Healing and The View from Delphi, as guest this week.  Jon shares an unpublished essay that he prepared several years ago when he was working with fifth graders on "keeping their stories alive." He told me,"Kids are the real story experts and taught me more than I taught them. They caused me to re-remember and revise my recollections about writing."
  

In life, you can either LIVE OUT OF your imagination, or you can LIVE OUT OF your history. 

That's what adults do with much of our lives. We live out our history, doing the things that have worked once upon a time, obeying the rules, avoiding the things that didn't work and stubbornly refusing to imagine a new story for ourselves.     

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Writing, Editing, and the Power of Three--A Guest Interview with Writer and Editor Jeri Reilly

Jeri Reilly is a writer and freelance editor. She is currently writing a book--a manifesto for baby boomers--with co-author Eric Utne. She blogs about word matters at www.jerireilly.com and can be followed on twitter @jerireilly. She lives in Minneapolis and sometimes in Ireland.

Tell us about your background as an editor and writer.

I fell into editing because I was a writer. For many years I worked for a cultural organization where I wrote and edited all kinds of communications for management.  

One day I told my boss I needed to get some credentials--so that when I told this or that manager that they had to change a word or a sentence, I would know which rule to cite. So they wouldn't take it personally. My boss agreed, and so I flew to Chicago and took an intensive course taught by the managing editor of the Chicago Manual of Style.  

I returned to work elated: I had my University of Chicago Publishing School certificate, I knew my way around the latest edition of CMS, and I had a lovely box of (erasable) colored pencils for marking up pages.

Editing has given me a lot of freedom. It made it possible for me to live in Ireland after I left that full-time job. When I moved to a 200-year-old stone cottage halfway up a mountain, I brought my American clients with me, via dial-up internet. One of my writers, a memoirist, did not write on the computer but was undaunted by the distance between us.  

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