What’s up, NaNo Victorious?

1st Lieutenant ML Ensis reporting for duty. I have some tips for those of you wish to edit those freshly penned manuscripts.

Ready for tip #1? Let the ink dry. Seriously, It’s only been a month. If you were to look through your story now there’s no way you’d have objective enough perspective to fix any of the serious problems.
This is why I also recommend waiting to let others critique it. People are going to tell you what they think isn’t working, but you may be inclined to dismiss their opinions. It’s your newborn baby. You still remember when you wrote that way-too-long scene that doesn’t even have to be in there—you couldn’t possibly cut it!
Sure, you might have the capacity to run a spell check, clip those glaring mistakes that keep you up at night and add that flashback scene that fleshes out the antagonist, but your story needs much more work than that.
A lot more. And to be frank, you’re not ready. I know, I know, you’re eager. You’re just itching for something to do. So run the spell check. Fix the things that bother you. Add a scene.
But then, let it sit. It needs to cook. You need to forget how you wrote it.
But just how long will that take?

Here comes tip#2… You can’t hurry love—err, literature. Editing is going to take a long time. A loooooooong time. Especially if you have a life outside of writing. That’s why you need to be sure right now that you’re committed, that you really want to see this thing through to completion. It took me over a year before I was ready to seriously start editing my first NaNo novel.
Will it take you just as long? Maybe not. When will you know?
Write another book. By the time you’re done, you should be one large step closer to the novel-objectivity that will let you slice-and-dice your oh so precious manuscript. Why, you ask?
You’ve learned so much from writing your novel—more than you realize. When you put what you’ve learned into practice and finish your second novel (which is likely to be harder, by the way, but more on that later) you’ll be able to tell exactly what you would have done differently the first time, and you’ll have a greater knowledge of how to change it. But you’ll still feel bad about murdering those darlings.

Which brings us to tip #3: Cut—Don’t delete. It’s okay to love your work. Even the parts that are so embarrassingly tangential and random that they make you question your sanity. But they can’t stay in the story. You know they can’t.
Don’t delete them. You never know what you may be able to make useful later.
That’s why I take all my cuts and put them in another document. It’s called “<Your Novel’s Title> Recycle Bin.” That’s where all the scrap goes—but be clear—it’s not trash.
It’s an important literary stepping-stone on the path to a story that doesn’t suck.
Save those clippings for posterity.

So with these tips fresh in your minds, you’re ready to start not editing your shiny new novels.


Chapter 2: So you’re going to edit your novel anyway.

Good. Fine. Ignore my advice. Most people like to jump into editing their first book before they're really ready (I did), but it's not that big a deal; you'll have to run through it at least three times anyway (very conservative estimate, by the way...). But I suppose you’ll be wanting some insight as to how you should go about that.
Well, the very first step is also the simples, and least time consuming. Print it up. I recommend making the font a little smaller and double spacing it so you’ll have some room to work around the text and it won’t cost you a fortune—or at least not as much of a fortune… I would strongly discourage you from reading it on your PC screen. Something will undoubtedly be lost between the screen and the page, and if you edit something to read well on the PC, it’ll sound weird on the page. Don’t ask me why, but trust me, it does.
So to begin you should go ahead and read your story first. You can make notes on another sheet of paper, or maybe post-its, but don’t start writing on your manuscript until after you’ve read it. Get a sense of the big-picture first. If you choose to make notes, write down things that bother you, scenes you feel aren’t working, and places that seem to need just a bit more exposition. Don’t worry too much about how you’re going to fix those right now, there’ll be time to agonize for hours over that later.
And, having read the book once, read it again. But this time, DON’T get sucked into the story. Try to stay outside it and just read the words. Don’t get me wrong, It’s awesome if you like your work and it holds your interest, but if you get drawn into your own world, you’ll fly right by mistakes that need serious correction.
And then nobody but you will want to read it.