And Away We Go

I think a week’s long enough to wait before starting editing, don’t you?

I’m curious to know how people work with their document to edit it. Organization isn’t my strong point. I have a single Open Office document with my entire first draft written in it. Obviously I’m not going to edit directly onto that. I’m thinking about copying it in one- or two-chapter chunks into new documents and revising from there. Or maybe this is a good time to get Scrivener, since it chunks up your work for you? Maybe use the smaller two-chapter docs to edit and then paste those into a new, complete second-draft doc so I can see it all together?

The first two chapters present an additional dilemma because I’m planning on deleting 90% of them and starting from scratch. Maybe I’ll paste them into a new doc, and then start writing fresh below, pasting in the bits that I want to keep as I go. I’m starting to wish I had two monitors so I don’t have to keep going back and forth between the new and old versions all the time…

***EDIT***

Almost forgot I bought that highly recommended book on editing. Maybe I should read it and it will give me some tips. I’m really awesome sometimes.

Previous

Gratitude

Next

Six Sentence Sunday

4 Comments

  1. I was trying to edit in chunks, but finally compiled one large document. I am finding that much easier. When the first draft was compiled, I printed it out and read the paper copy. I’m finally putting those notes (and more) to work in the second draft. I hope to have that work completed in a month. I’m not sure where I’ll go from there. Perhaps printing it out again and rereading it? Who knows. I’m winging this.

    • Printing and making notes is definitely going to be a part of my revision plan. But right now I feel like there’s so much to rewrite that it’s easier accomplished on the computer. Maybe this is draft 1.5? Glad to know I’m not alone in fumbling through the process!

  2. I do my first 2-3 edits on paper, then enter those into my word doc (for me, Scrivener, usually). The final edit I do on the computer screen. But I find that I tend to skim reading on the computer, and that isn’t conducive to good editing. And I don’t edit until I’m done, and then I print the whole thing off and do it all at once for each editing phase. I hate editing. :oP

    • I’ve been editing on the computer so far and I’m definitely skimming :/ I think once I do my major rewrites for certain sections I’m going to print everything out and attack it with my red pen.

Comments are closed.