Assuming you survive the heart-wrenching, glorious process of writing a book, now you just need to destroy it.
Okay, perhaps I’m being a touch dramatic.
If you’ve gone through a developmental edit or you’re self-revising with a magenta marker, you know how hard it gets. Trying to look objectively at your lovely book feels like being forced to torture your loved ones with a rusty pitchfork.
Every change spawned additional changes, so I couldn’t get myself out of the maze. “But if this happens in chapter 2, then chapter 10 is all wrong and chapter 15 will break…” I was paralyzed by indecision and worry that I was ruining my book.
How I stopped losing my mind…
Make one change at a time. Make that change throughout the entire book. Resist the urge to fix everything at once.
When I changed my protagonist’s backstory, it meant she shouldn’t respond the same way in some situations. But the most important thing was to fix the actual backstory scenes first. Once that was done, then I could do a pass making sure her interactions with the killer were consistent. Then her interactions with the inspector, and so on.
How do you edit? Are you able to edit all the things at the same time as you move through the manuscript?
Faith Allington 