Setting the Editing Process in Train

Setting the Editing Process in Train

If you’re a writer currently in the process of developing a project, and your ultimate objective is to have it published, there will come a time when you’ll need to find a professional editor to bring it to a stage where it’s ready to prepare for release.

There are many editors out there so it’s in your interest to make a shortlist and send off a chapter for a free sample edit. This sample will help you decide whether or not to take things further with a specific editor. In my eyes, it’s the only way to go before making that decision. Word of mouth is great, but even with a reference from another writer, there’s nothing better than actually seeing how an editor brings your work to a new level.

Your work – a novel, memoir, whatever – deserves to be the recipient of a comprehensive editing package. A copyedit or proofread does not constitute a full edit. Nothing less than a deep-tissue line edit will get to the base of your project’s woes. Every aspect of the writing is reviewed at this stage, with nothing passing to the next level without being scrutinised to the nth.

Once that phase has been completed and edits applied, then the copyedit begins, ensuring the updated draft stands confidently on its own feet. Editing at this stage is more about surface fixes, ensuring old and new gel together, and that nothing has fallen through the cracks from first to second edit.

When the author receives the copyedit back, the heightened script-clarity often evokes surprise, akin to first seeing the inside of a new-build after viewing it for so long as a dusty building site. The strong sense of shape allows the writer see the light through the ‘release’ door.

The next stage is the thorough proofread, creating copy clean enough to send on its way. Once that’s complete, all that’s required is the pulling together of blurb, cover-design, formatting, and the zillion other bits and pieces associated with pre-release preparation. You’ll have put that in train during the waiting periods of the editing process.

Any good editor is a busy one, which means that scheduling more often than not comes into play. Sometimes it might take a couple of months or more before your edit begins, but once the process activates, there’s no looking back and it won’t be long before you have the completed package in hand.

How does it begin? By sending in a sample chapter. Choose yours and send it to clearviewediting@gmail.com and I’ll get back to you with a free sample edit that will allow you see what I can do to help bring your project to the world at large. If it works for you, we can have a chat and move on from there. I look after my clients so you won’t regret it.

http://clearviewfictionediting.com/

Time to Exhale

It’s Sunday morning and I’m taking a few minutes out of my busy schedule to share the joy I experienced recently of getting away from it all to spend a wonderful long weekend with lifelong writer friends off in the fantastic isolation of Eyeries in West Cork.

Being a busy editor, I don’t get much time to write my own material, or as much time as I’d like. This weekend, however, saw a total focus on that one endeavour, made all the better being in the company of some exceptional people, all warriors of the word, and the world, and all with minds and hearts open to experience and learning, willing to step into spaces and onto levels many would run from.

We rented a gorgeous house on a hill, overlooking a bay that provided an exceptional variety of seascape atmospheres and awe-inspiring sunsets that took the breath away and provided constant inspiration for several souls hungry to gather it in and fill pages with the magic of it all.

We walked the black-sand beach and mooed at sentinel cows, watched diving cormorants do their hunting thing in the crashing surf, and sat spellbound in a mystical environment of the senses, the only distraction our ever-increasing awe at being a guest of the universe.

And at night, we’d step outside into the pitch-black and crane our necks in silent disbelief at the overwhelming clarity of the Milky Way. What a sight for a city boy who grew up in constant light, with the rare view of a handful of stars on a good night. I was stunned, and that’s putting it mildly. I tried so hard to get shots with my camera, but nothing but the best could have captured the glory of this experience. I swear, my heart was in my mouth with the joy of it – I’ve never felt so open and held in my life – for that time I was in the zone, a solid member of the cosmos, connected to everything the universe had to offer.

What a weekend. We chatted, ate way too much, even had a tipple or two, but most of all we took time to exhale and appreciate the time we had – to soak it all up, to put pen to paper, and then to share what we’d captured, and I didn’t have to edit a single word from anyone’s work but my own. You can’t get better than that. Well, maybe another weekend in the not too distant future.

Now, time to get back to the grindstone. If you have a work-in-progress and plan to submit it for a professional edit, visit my website to get a better idea of my services and what I’m about, then send a sample chapter to clearviewediting@gmail.com for a free sample edit. You won’t regret it.

http://clearviewfictionediting.com/