183: Editing My Book: What I Learned

 

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Editing My Book: What I Learned

Thank you for being here. I am a little bit sleep deprived today because my daughter is teething, which is funny, because she's 18 months old, like I thought she was done, but she's getting her what are the teeth? The molars, I think are the big ones. And she has just been out of sorts the last few days, and her sleep has been disrupted because of it. She got up at 6am which isn't that early, like I'm generally up around 630 so it's not too much earlier than I normally get up. But I'm just, I'm struggling this morning because I already didn't sleep very well. Haven't slept well last couple nights, and so, yeah, but I'm gonna power through. You know, I know it's a phase. I feel so bad for her because she's 18 months like, I can't explain to her rationally. Hey, here's why you have so much to drool. Here is why you are in pain. Here's why you only want certain food. Like she's not going to understand that fully anyways. So I just feel so bad for her. But because do you think like it's gotta suck to have your mouth be sore, it affects so many things. But anyways, I'm powering through. We're gonna get through today.

 

Okay, I have done a couple of episodes talking about my process with writing stuff, my own stuff. I did an episode of the podcast over the winter, I believe, or maybe even the fall, that was about the process of drafting this book and getting a draft out in 30 days. And I wanted to do an episode talking about the things that I've learned editing, because I feel like I always learn something about craft, about actually editing story, the story itself, but then also my own process. And I wanted to share about it, just in case it's helpful for you. I always like other writers talking about their process and what they've learned, because I find it helpful to hear that. So for context, again, this book, I wrote a draft in the Fall in 30 days, and most of the book was dictated. So at the end of 30 days, it was pretty rough, just because when you dictate something, it helps you get the words out faster. But it's also tough because punctuation is missing, it misunderstands what you're saying.

 

So there's, like, incorrect words, there's a lot of cleanup that's required to get the draft just to a legible point. So that took a while. And then also, I made some edits to the story itself. There were, like, a few scenes where I just was like, I kind of put down the rough outline of what I wanted to happen, so I had to go back and actually flesh those out. So that was the the timeline for the book. I wrote it in the fall. It's a thriller, and I sent it to my agent right before the holidays. I knew that she wouldn't get it, get to it, probably, until, like, end of January, but I just wanted to send it off energetically. I just wanted to... I wanted to send it off. I wanted to release it. I wanted to be done with it so that I wouldn't be thinking about it over the holidays. And I knew that the book wasn't super polished. I knew it wasn't completely ready, and if I had been querying the book, if I didn't have an agent, or if I were publishing it myself, I would have done a lot more work to edit the book, obviously. But it was, but it was pretty in a pretty solid place, I thought.

 

So I sent it off and I got feedback on it either February or March. I can't remember the exact timeline and the structure of this novel. So again, it's a thriller, and it takes place over the course of, let's see, three or four days at this conference that's taking place in Miami. So our one of the main characters is kind of like a Tony Robbins motivational speaker type person, and he's hosting this conference, and all of our main characters are there for this conference, and it's about events that unfold while this conference is going on, and the different perspectives that these people have. So the timeline is really short, and I also originally had three point of view characters. So one of the character, point of view characters was his wife, another, and then two, two of the point of view characters were attending the conference. So it was three women, the feedback that I got that the big suggestion was to cut one of the point of view characters. It it read as though two of the point of view point of view characters were really solid. They had clear arcs. They were they had it was enjoyable to be in their perspective, to kind of see how things were playing out.

 

But then the third character, who was another one of the attendees, I got feedback that it felt like she didn't have as much active participation in the story. It felt like things weren't really being driven in. In there wasn't a lot of momentum in her point of view, in her arc. It just she just wasn't as compelling of a character. So the suggestion was to either do some things to fix it, and we had a phone call where we talked about about this, or to just remove her point of view completely. And I would I, if I did, if I went that route, I would still keep her in the book. She would still be a character and be in a lot of scenes, but we just wouldn't be in her perspective. We wouldn't be in her head. So I thought about it, because that was going to be a big lift. It's going to be a big change. And initially I will say, my ego and my my brain was like, oh, it's going to be a lot of work. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do all that work. And so I was trying to think of a way to make her more active and shift her arc. But the more I thought about it in the more I sat with the feedback, I realized that it made sense, and I ended up going that route. So I completely removed her point of view chapters, and I changed the book to only have two point of view characters.

 

So it's this motivational speaker, person's wife, and then an attendee, someone who's attending the conference, and that's it. And Avery the point of view character who her point of view got cut. She's still in the book. She shows up quite frequently. She's in this small group, but again, we just don't have her point of view. So it required some reconfiguring of certain chapters. So there were a number of chapters where I just rewrote them, I repurposed it to be from a different characters point of view. Now, the reason I was able to do this is because, again, the book takes place over several days. It's a very tight timeline, with stuff that happens on the first night of the conference, stuff and stuff that happens on day one, stuff that happens on day two. And so all of these characters are present together. They're all in this small VIP group attending this convention, right that they're they're in close proximity. So for some of the chapters, it was easy enough for me to just repurpose to be from one of the other point of view characters, as opposed to Avery, who I cut. I don't know if this is I'm hard. It's hard to, like, talk about this and give specifics without telling, without giving too much away about the story. And I don't want to do that yet. I don't want to talk too in depth about the characters or what happens. But yeah, it worked because of that. Because they were in, they were all in the scene. Anyway, it was easy enough to repurpose.

 

And I say easy enough, it still was challenging, because I had to add a lot more. I had to shift the interiority right. Because if we're now in, like his wife Maria, Maria is the character's name, the motivational speaker's wife, Maria, if we're in her point of view, she's going to have a different internal voice. She's going to have a different response to things that are going on than one of the people attending the conference. She's going to have different flashbacks. She's going to have different feelings towards her husband, who's leading this conference. So it did require some shifting there. I also wrote one new chapter completely to replace a chapter that had been from Avery's point of view, who was attending the conference, and I just scrapped that completely, and I couldn't repurpose it, because it was her alone in a hotel room. And if we're not in her point of view, then that won't work. So I had to just write a new chapter from Maria's point of view, where she's out with her daughter doing some stuff in Miami. And that was the big edit. And what's interesting about this, looking back, I when I first came up with the concept for this, I had three point of view characters, and then I thought about shifting it to two point of view characters, and I wrestled. And if you go back and listen to some of the podcast episodes from last year, I think I talk about that, like wrestling with this decision, should I have two point of view characters? Should I have three point of view characters?

 

And I was going back and forth, going back and forth, trying to make it work. And another big stumbling block that I had in this book initially is I was trying to do it in third person, and it was hard. It was just difficult to do that, and I switched to first person, and it became so much easier. And I had that experience with my second book too. I don't know what it is, I guess maybe just for the type of books that I'm writing. First person just feels more accessible to me to write it, I don't know, yeah, so that helped. And then, but I, but I, I was like, I partially made the decision to go to two point of view characters. And then I was like, No, it needs three. So yeah, now I'm kind of like, Oh, I wish I would have just done two from the get go, but, you know it, I had to go through the experience and Avery this character, I think she's gonna be... I think she is a lot stronger actually in the book, because I went through that experience of writing from her point of view for an entire book. I have a deeper understanding of who she is, what she's working towards, how she views this conference, just her strengths and weaknesses, like I have a much deeper understanding and appreciation of her character.

 

So I think that's all gonna reflect positively on her character in this version of the book, even if she's not a point of view character. So I went through and I did all of that big picture stuff first. So I repurposed the chapters, I wrote the new chapter. I also fleshed out a plot point that wasn't really continued. It's like I sort of had it and I dropped it, and I mentioned it occasionally, but it didn't ever really get fully resolved. So I went back and, like, flesh that out, and that required, like, adding some new paragraphs, finish, finishing a scene a different way, that kind of thing. So I did all of those big picture edits first. Then once that was done, I went back through the draft and cleaned up those new scenes, meaning I looked at the word choice. I looked at the sentences. I tried to vary how my characters were, what their mannerisms were, how they were reacting, the thoughts that they were thinking, all of that stuff to make sure it felt solid.

 

Because when I was just getting that stuff down, I went pretty quickly, and I didn't try to make it perfect on the first go. I just got the rough kind of frame, the rough skeleton of it down, and then knew I would come back in later to polish it now the chapter, there were some chapters that I didn't change at all, so I did nothing to those chapters when I was editing. I just left them as is, and then sent that off to my agent at the beginning of April. So I know that I still were anticipating doing at least one more round of edits, because my agents gonna have to give me feedback on the new stuff, the new chapters. So we'll probably go through and do one round of edits on that to polish that up, and then hopefully after that, it'll go on submission. But TBD, I don't have the feedback yet. It's May 6, as I'm recording this. So we'll see. By the time this episode is out, I might have the notes back, but we'll see my and she usually does a tiny bit of line editing too, just to in case there's anything that has to be polished. So when I sent this draft back to her, I didn't worry about doing one final read through on my end. I want to wait and do that on this next round to see if there's anything I want to tweak in terms of my actual writing, the description, etc.

 

And what's funny about it, I talked about this in my my episode that I did, or talked about the dictating and the process of writing this book. It ended up, I think it was like 71,000 words when I sent it to her, and I was pretty stressed about that word count, because that's low, and the final draft, not final. The draft that I sent back to her after doing this big point of view edit is like 72 or 73,000 words. It's not much longer, which is interesting. And I when we had the phone call, I expressed concern about that word count, and she's like, it's okay, if the pacing feels okay, it feels really tight, and it's like moving along really fast, and for a thriller, I think that's okay. And going on submission, she said it's much better to have, like, a word count that's slightly shorter, as opposed to a word count that's slightly too long, because you can always go in and add more. If you do get a book deal, and you talk to the editor, and you get up with a plan. You come together, come up with a plan about any revisions that you want to make to the book before it gets published. You can always add in more stuff.

 

So she was okay with the word count being 7273 and we'll see what the final word count ends up being. But I don't anticipate that it's going to be that much longer. She had thrown out an option of like, maybe adding a scene where these two point of view characters are together, because they are together a lot, but it's not just the two of them. They're with other people. They're with this VIP group. They're with the host of the conference, so they don't have a ton of time where it's just the two of them. And she threw that out as an option, not any specifics, but just was like, hey, it could use this, like you could think about that as an option. And I started writing a scene. I started mulling over some ideas, but it just didn't feel totally I wasn't sold on anything. So what I'm gonna do when I get the notes back and I have this next draft that I'm going. Through is I'm going to see if I feel like there's any point where there could be a scene inserted, but I don't want to just insert a scene for the sake of inserting a scene and making the book longer. If it's not necessary, it's not necessary.

 

So I'll kind of wait and decide with this next draft if I do want to, if I if that feedback resonates with me, and I want to add in a scene and I can think of something that makes sense for the story. So, yeah, I also have to think of a title for this book, which is actually something I'm working on this week. My process for coming up with a title is to just get a blank Word doc and just brain dump all kinds of words that have to do with the book. So with the plot, with the characters, with the setting, with the themes, just dump a bunch of words in a document, like, maybe get, like, 30 or 40 words, and then start to play, I don't know, kind of like piece them together to see if I can get a title from what I have in my brain dump document, and we'll see. Yeah, I don't know. I'm I hate coming up with titles. I'm terrible at it. That's that's the way I know how to do it. Is to just and and in my last, my last two books, neither of which are published, my first title for my first book was Hidden Lake, because that's the lake where this family had a cabin that they went to every summer.

 

And then for my second book, the first title, when I queried it was called scoop, because scoop was the name of the podcast. But then we took the podcast out and it we changed the title to love you, miss you, which is something that the characters say because they're in a sorority, and it's like they're parting their their goodbye term, they like love you miss you. And it's like this thing that gets repeated through the book, so it's called Love you Miss you. So I don't know, I don't know what this one will be, maybe the name of the conference, but that's kind of boring. We'll see. Um, so that's, that's my thing that I'm working on now. It's just coming up with the title. And there's the there's the understanding that when you send a book out, it's a mission, it's always a working title, like it's not set in stone. Or when you query, if you're listening to this and you're querying and you're not totally sold in your book's title, that's okay, a lot of or not a lot, but it it's never set in stone until it's actually printed and published. What the title is, I can always change down the road.

 

So yeah, I think I learned a lot in this process about point of view characters and not being too precious about things and really thinking through who needs to be a point of view character, and what scenes we need to see and what character's perspective? Because when you're writing a multiple point of view story, you have to decide like, Okay, if you know that this important plot point is happening, which character whose perspective Do you want to be in when that thing happens? You have to make those decisions as the author. So there is some puzzle there are some puzzle pieces that you have to strategically think about when you're doing this type of book. That is just a lot simpler when you're doing a single point of view character. Um, my first two books were single point of view characters, so I didn't have to do any of this work. But I like, I kind of like the challenge of this, and it is kind of fun to write in different characters perspectives. I do really like the three point of view character structure. I think that's the other thing, is realizing, like there's something that's satisfying about that.

 

Timmy is a reader, so maybe I could try that again with another book, while just making sure that we need three characters, and then all three characters have their own unique arc, that they're moving the story forward, making sure that all those pieces are in place and that it feels essential for the story. But I like that structure two point of view as well. I do like that, but yeah, there's just something about that three. So anyways, letting go of ego and pride and being like, Okay, what's gonna serve the story the best. What else did I learn? I think, just recognizing that my process is best served when I at least for now, when I dictate, let things be rough, and then don't go back to edit them until later, until I'm doing another round of editing through, as opposed to trying to edit it as I'm dictating or like right after. So I would, let's say I'm working on a scene and I'm dictating something new.

 

It makes me crazy to dictate for 10 minutes, get the scene done and then immediately go back to clean up everything and polish it. I don't like doing that. I would rather just be in the mindset of getting the words out, letting it be rough, and then later going back. Yeah, and I think also just a sense of of this is always something I struggle with. I learned this lesson every time there's anything going. On with my agent is just patience, patience and trust that I don't have to rush things. I can feel impatient, yes, but like it's gonna take some time. It's gonna take some time for her to get back to me. It's gonna take some time for me to do the edits. There's no, there's no reason to rush through it. Just for the sake of rushing through it, I can take my time and not draw it out unnecessarily. I mean, I want to get this book out on submission. I'm really motivated, but I don't need to have a sense of like, oh, it's gotta happen now. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, which is hard for me. I'm very impatient, especially because I'm like, Okay, this is my third book. Y'all like, I gotta get a book deal. Oh, my God, but, yeah, we'll see. And I need to, I need to ask her, if we're I need to ask her, kind of like, what the plan is with Book Two, the one that did have a podcast that doesn't anymore, because only one editor has seen that revised version.

 

And I don't know if it would be possible to send both out, or kind of do, like a two book deal. I don't know if that would be possible or recommended, or how that would work, but I'm still hopeful for that book too. I don't call that one like dead that it hasn't sold. So anyways, I feel like I'm rambling now, but that's that's kind of the the process of of what I went through with this edit and the lessons that I learned. So hopefully that was interesting, if you were also editing and maybe writing multiple points of view, it's fun, and it's challenging in a good way to do this and fit these puzzle pieces together. And I'm really excited about this book. Y'all. I think it's really fun. I think it's really explore some topics that I think are that I haven't seen a lot in fiction. I don't know. I'm just excited about it. So hopefully I'll have more share to share soon. I will do my best to keep you all posted on how things are going, and if you are editing your own book, I'm thinking about you remember to take your time do the big picture stuff first, before you go in to clean up your sentences and individual words and stuff like that, I think that's the best way to do it. Okay. Well, thank you for listening and watching, and I'll see you next week.

Katie Wolf