Blinded by Your Own Brilliance or Why You Should Edit with Fresh Eyes

It's hard to know when you're really finished with a manuscript. After all the writing, editing, polishing, rewriting, and re-editing, it's easy to feel finished too soon.

The first ten pages of your manuscript are pivotal. They tell an agent or editor a lot about you as a writer. You don't want ANY mistakes on these first pages.

I was recently judging a contest and I was shocked at how many minor mistakes were in the first few pages of many of the entries. I could tell, by the writing, these aspiring authors knew better. I'm talking about things like "to" instead of "too", a minor change in a character's name, inconsistencies with attire or setting.

Here's what I think the problem was:

The author thought he/she was finished and neglected to do a thorough edit with fresh eyes. After looking over the first few pages dozens of times, the author decided it was finished, done, finito, and sent the manuscript in to be judged. If, with fresh eyes, the author had gone over the pages again, I think all these mistakes would have been corrected, thereby increasing the chances of doing well in the contest.

Sometimes, in order to complete a productive edit of your manuscript, you need to put it down for a while. A couple of weeks, a month---a significant period of time. This way you pay more attention. You haven't JUST read it and your eye doesn't fill in nearly as much.

The first ten pages of your manuscript may be BRILLIANT but if they're riddled with errors, most agents and editors will likely pass. They want to make sure you're precise and capable of editing your own work. Sure, they'll have changes and edits to add to yours, but you don't want a stupid mistake to ruin your chances.

Be sure to join me tomorrow. We've got another guest blogger!

If the Pronoun Monster Calls, I'm Not Here

I know I promised to spend some time on romance subgenres, and I will, but today, I have something more pressing on my mind. Pronouns.

Yesterday, I was working with an editor who wanted some changes to a manuscript. After looking over her comments and then reading through my work, I was HORRIFIED. The Pronoun Monster should have clobbered me on Page 1. Total explosion of pronouns: he, she, it, her, his----all over the page. I'm embarrassed to tell you how many she found in one paragraph. But the number is burned into my brain and I have to tell you---24!

After the inital shock wore off, I tried to figure out why I'd used so many. One simple reason: LAZINESS. In every case of overusage, there was a better, more active, way to write the sentence. Yes, there are instances where pronouns are required, but if you're using them indiscriminately, i.e. every other word, you're not paying attention. In long passages, where I was caught up in writing, I made this mistake time and time again. After I saw the passages with a reader's eye, instead of a writer's eye, it was easy to spot and correct.

Here are some examples:

Before:
Looking in the mirror, she saw the dark, sooty lines of the mascara she’d applied so carefully this morning trailing all the way down her cheeks. (3 Pronouns)

After:
Dark, sooty lines of mascara, applied so carefully this morning, trailed in rivulets down her cheeks. (1 Pronoun)

Before:
Her red dress hugged the curves of her hips like a second skin and did nothing to hide the generous swell of her breasts. And the shiny black heels she wore made her legs look even longer. (5 Pronouns)

After:
The red dress fit like a second skin, accentuating the delicious curves of her breasts and hips. And the shiny black heels made her legs look even longer. (2 Pronouns)

Before:
The feel of her, so close to him, was electric. He wrapped one arm around her shoulder and let himself enjoy the way she fit so perfectly against his body. Her breath tickled the side of his face and it took every ounce of control he possessed not to wrap both his arms aroung her and pull her as tightly as he could against him. (14 Pronouns) (If the Pronoun Monster sees this sentence, I'm dead meat.)

After:
The tantalizing press of her breasts against his thin cotton shirt sent flickering waves of desire through him. Wrapping one arm around her waist, he tightened the embrace. The two bodies fit together perfectly, as if designed for eash other. Warm breath tickled his cheek, and he fought for control. (7 Pronouns--still not ideal, but much better.)

See what I'm getting at here? Too many pronouns slow down the writing and make the brain feel tired. I encourage you to look over some of your own work and see if this is one bad habit you can fix before it's too late. (I hear him breathing. . .He's coming. . .)

Your Manuscript & The Velveteen Rabbit

Weeks passed, and the little Rabbit grew very old and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit any more, except to the Boy.
-The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams , Double Day, 1922

Remember this classic? It's one of my favorite books because, in addition to being a wonderful story, it teaches us some very valuable life lessons. And more than one of those lessons can be applied to manuscripts and the writing life. But since this is a blog, let's stick with one of the most important of those lessons.

You can love your manuscript until it no longer looks like a book to anyone except you. Let me explain myself.

Manuscripts take a lot of time and energy. The more work you put into them, the more real the story becomes to you, the writer. But be careful. You can edit, revise, rewrite and change the story until it becomes unrecognizable and unsellable.

Think of your manuscript as a piece of beautiful fabric---enough to make one garment. After much thought, you choose a pattern for your garment. You sew and sew and sew and then you try the garment on. It fits, but there are a few places where it needs to be altered. You fix the hem, maybe take in the waist a bit, and then try it on again. Perfect fit.

Now, if you take the same piece of fabric, make a dress out of it, then you decide it shouldn't be a dress, but maybe a pair of pants. So you rip out the seams and start again. Now that it's pants, they're too short, so you tack some extra fabric on the hem, but it doesn't match the print. so you decide you'll make your pants into shorts, only the zipper you put in the pants is too long. . .

See what I'm getting at here? You can love your manuscript to death. You can ruin it by working on it too much or by trying to make it into something it isn't. I don't mean you should just spit your words out and never revise. I mean you need to learn when you've reached the natural end of a manuscript. You need to know when to shelve it and start on the next one. Not every manuscript will sell. That doesn't mean you're a bad writer. But don't waste time, time you could be working on the new one, to beat a dead horse.

A Writer's Journey

I’m in revision hell now. If I’m being completely honest, I’m not even revising. I’m rewriting. In the first 10 pages, I’ve kept one line of my manuscript. That’s right one line. Sigh. When I wrote the novel, I knew that my first draft was bad. I knew that my characters needed work. I knew that it would take me months to get it in a viewable-by- human-eyes-other-than-mine state. I was right. Even longer sigh.

My name is Vikki Perry and I’m a member of the Columbia II chapter of SCWW and I’m getting my historical romance ready to be critiqued at the South Carolina Writers’ Conference. If my math is correct, I have 132 days to remake my novel into something that I wouldn’t mind an agent or editor seeing, to remake my novel into something that has potential to catch their eye and make them think, I want to read more of this. One hundred and thirty-two days is a very short period of time in which to turn a really horrible first draft into a manuscript worthy of their consideration. Fear. Anxiety. Absolute terror. I feel all of these things, right now.

Can I finish my revisions in time? Can I avoid making my characters unlikeable idiots? Can I pick the right agent or editor choices for critique purposes? How do I talk up my novel without making the agent mad? Should I even try? I don’t know the answers to these questions and I may not find them, but for the next few months, I’m going to be blogging about how I’m preparing for the conference. I would love to hear what you’re doing as well, so leave a comment and tell us about your process.

Are you revising your novel for the conference? What are the problems that you are facing?