I owe the title of this post to Saleema Nawaz, a Montreal author whose blog I started reading last year; check out her post on novel-editing here. Now that I’ve completed a draft of my own novel, I thought I’d draw up my own list of steps. There are ten—because archetypal numbers make me happy—starting with:
Photo by URBAN ARTefakte
1. Adopt the Taoist attitude. Put the draft in a drawer and, for at least a month, do nothing, nada, zilch.
2. Use that time to exercise other parts of your writerly brain—do some freelance journalism, write a book review—and to convince your friends that, despite the anti-social tendencies you’ve been exhibiting for the past few months, you do in fact still like them.
3. If you don’t like to read other writers’ work while you’re trying to hammer out your own, this is also a good time to make a dent in that “to read” pile you’ve got teetering on your night table. It might also be an appropriate time to check out Making a Good Script Great, Linda Seger’s guide to re-writing.
4. In the meantime, beg/wheedle/charm/cajole other writers—and careful readers, readers whom you trust—until they agree to edit your draft. (If you’re brave and/or crazy, like this writer duo, you can foist it on your significant other, too. Or maybe you’ve already creepily permeated each other’s psyches, like this couple, making foisting unnecessary.)
5. Before you read your editors’ notes, think about all the problems you yourself can spot in the existing draft. Think about all the little things that make you squirm. All the little things that don’t feel quite right. You will not fall prey to Golden Prose Syndrome. You will change these things.
6. Read the notes.
7. Compare them with your own gut feelings. Throw them up against the wall of your own intuition, and see what sticks. Contemplate problems and possible solutions.
8. Pull out the old beat sheet—the plot outline you drew up when you first sat down to write that initial draft. In all likelihood, your editors will have pointed out that it’s got some problems you hadn’t noticed before. Maybe some beats are in the wrong order. Maybe some beats are in the wrong book altogether. Adjust the sheet accordingly.
9. Take a nice big gulp of whatever it is that makes you feel invincible—Earl Grey tea, whiskey, unicorn blood—and remember why you wanted to write this thing in the first place. Shine your shoes for the Fat Lady.
10. Now do your work.
