insert clever title here: The last thing you do...

...is line editing.

You know, line editing. That thing you do where you write a paragraph or two, go back over it, tweak a word or a phrase, maybe write a little more, tweak that, then get stuck, go back through everything you've written so far and tweak that. It's the thing your Inner Editor wants you to do, and it's what NaNoWriMo trains you out of doing. (Am I going to mention NaNoWriMo in every post from now until December? I just might!) You know what I'm talking about.

Well, I'm here to tell you that not only should you NEVER do what I just described, you shouldn't line edit AT ALL until EVERYTHING else is finished. And I don't just mean finishing your first draft (although that's a start). I mean, this type of editing should not happen until you've written at least two or three (or six) drafts. It shouldn't happen until the pacing of your story has been smoothed out, the scenes are all there and in order, and you're so sick of this darn thing that if you have to look at it one more time, you'll puke.

Now can you line edit? Well, no. Puke is bad. When you get to that point, stop, take a break, and come back to it when the sight of it doesn't make you queasy. If the structure is still good, NOW you can line edit. Now you can go through and tweak like you've always wanted. And then you're done. You've done the last thing. You have a novel.

Now it's time to mail it to people and get rejected a lot!

insert clever title here: Outlines

I have always hated the idea of outlines.

They stifle creativity, I thought. They're annoying/boring/too hard to write. They don't serve any purpose.

Wrong.

I've recently learned that not only are outlines not stiflers of creativity, they are kind of necessary. Maybe you don't start off with one, but you're going to need one eventually because novels are LONG, and it's hard to keep track of stuff (especially for me). And they provide structure and guidance, which, on a big, long project such as a whole novel, is really helpful. The best part is, you don't have to follow it if you don't want to. In fact, you might not make one until you're quite a ways in.

Case in point: during my most recent project, when I finally broke down and actually wrote an outline, I was already part of the way through draft 2.5. But it made everything after it so easy I'm starting the next Nanowrimo with one. What it did was give me a roadmap. I'd always started novels with only a hazy idea of where I was going... okay, let's be real here, I'd pretty much do the noveling equivalent of closing my eyes, spinning in a circle, stopping when I got dizzy, and setting off in the direction I was facing. I almost never had an ending, and odds were against me having anything more than a sketch of a character or two, a basic setting, and maybe a conflict. I would discover the territory as I went along, and while that can be terribly exciting, it's more often boring because you can't move half the time, having no idea where you're going. I'd get stuck a lot. With an outline, on the other hand, things were much smoother, and when I did get stuck, I could just look at the outline, and be able to tell what the story needed in this spot here and now, and not have to go blindly forward and then backtrack several times. Instead of stifling my creativity, it helped inspire it.

P.S. I've heard of an extreme version of this, and I've included it mainly for your curiosity. I've never tried it, and while it sounds like it would work in theory, I think I am much too inexperienced to try it myself yet. (Also, it sounds really hard.)

Titles are hard

I just finished revising the novel I wrote last year for NaNoWriMo. I am so excited, because this is the first time I've actually finished writing a rough draft for a novel and then gone back and revised it. It was tough, and I had to almost completely rewrite it, but in the end I had 19,000 words that fit together well and that I could actually show people. Not publishers, mind you, but other human beings.

This process has taught me a lot about editing and revising, and it's been a hard road, and I know I'm not even close to the end. I know I have a lot more to learn before I'm even ready to start sending stuff to publishers, but I also know it's going to be a blast. Revising this novel has been so hard, but so worth it.

And I'd like to pass that knowledge on. So for the next few blog posts, and interspersed with the other stuff, I'm going to lay out what my own experience and the advice and experiences of others is teaching me about the whole writing process. I think I'll call this series "insert clever title here."

I mean, really, just look at the title of this blog post.