Light rain today, then a little bit of snow. It’s beautiful and overcast. Going up a hill at 6:30 this morning, I saw the brake lights of parked cars reflected in long stilts of rainwater streaming downhill.
I’ve been editing a book all day yesterday and today, still on this crazy schedule. I was getting worried about halfway through the novel, which was moving along at a decent pace. The book was good. That’s a nightmare for an editor, when you are just enjoying yourself. You’re getting paid to find out what’s wrong! What if there IS nothing wrong…scary stuff.
Thankfully the book completely fell apart right at that halfway point. Just completely. It felt like a different writer, at that point.
And that made me think of the importance of getting an editor to go in and smooth things out for you. I am constructing a document as I move through the edit, and at the end of the day I’ll have character development suggestions, possible plot structures, and what to look out for to avoid bad prose. It will be helpful, and the writer (who clearly has talent) will use it to plunge back in.
Team sports. Art is a squad thing, now. Writing will probably be the last one to go, but the early adopters can take a page from comedians:
At a certain point, Schulz talks about how there’s a whole team behind his comedy show. Which makes sense, and has been “a thing” since comedy shows existed. It’s bizarre to me, however, that more writers don’t take this approach. To most, it’s a solitary activity. You get feedback from beta readers, maybe. But the process of writing a novel is not collaborative, doesn’t involve a team. Why not?
Something to think about.
Broken River Blog 