Editing Woes...

I decided to take a brief break from writing between Christmas and New Year. Normally I write from 7am till around 2 every day, seven days a week. But I thought after doing that for a full year it was time to step back for a while.

But now I'm back at the keyboard, working on the final book of the Silk Rope Masters series. Book 6 is due out on the 28th of this month (January) and I hope my readers enjoy it. I have a real soft spot for the hero in this one.

As far as book 7 is concerned, I've written around 59k so far, think it will finish up between 65-70k. My beta reader has enjoyed the premise so I have my fingers crossed that they will enjoy the finished work.

I think the hardest part after (writing the first draft, the blurb, and coming up with the title) is the first edit. When I write I just get words on the page so that first edit for me is usually brutal.

I have to get rid of crutch words, change verbs where I have used the same one in several follow-on paragraphs. Then there's passive voice that's slipped in, 'tell' instead of 'show', too many adverbs, and too many gerunds starting sentences...lol.

For a year I mentored aspiring authors and found those things were the most common 'mistakes' as well as info dumping and big back story dumps. The main error new writers seem to have (and I was just as bad) is head-hopping (HH). I quickly learned to never HH, understand how to determine what the character can 'see' from their POV. But although some of my students picked it up quickly there were a couple who struggled with the concept.

I think the easiest way to explain it is to imagine you're a movie director and your actor is in a scene. What they can see, hear, feel, etc is what you can write. If they can't witness it but you write it then you've HHed- or moved to omnipresent POV which is also not good - switching from one POV to another in the middle of a paragraph is not wise...lol

Anyway, back to writing, hopefully I get the first draft finished within the next few weeks. But then to do the dreaded work of first edit!