Many great stories could have been published if they had had good editing. But agents and publishers are so inundated with book proposals that they no longer have the time to do it themselves. It’s entirely up to the author. The editing will make or break a book.
My process is similar to that outlined in Stephen King’s book, On Writing, which I highly recommend to writers of any genre. It’s the process I followed when I wrote Wesley the Owl, a memoir which became a runaway NY Times bestseller. The experiences I had as a new author demonstrate the method which helped me break the task down into smaller, defined, and easy pieces.
The first draft is for the writer. You can go off and explore tangents (which I call “bunny paths”), toss in extraneous ideas, make comments to yourself, and put things in the order in which they occur to you. You can, and should, make a big mess with far too many words, because this is your raw material.
In my workshop, we explore how to turn that raw material into clear, concise, interesting writing. We move out of the writer’s mindset and now work on behalf of our hapless reader, for whom none of this is obvious or understandable. We become the reader’s advocate, so that when he picks up our book, he will have no hurdles or obstacles to overcome, and can enjoy getting lost in the story with no interference from the writing.
That is the point of editing – to eliminate all distractions from the story.
The publishing industry demands a higher standard than most of us realize. It tolerates no sloppiness, confusion, weak transitions, repetition, repetition (ha-ha), or poor grammar. Reaching that standard is possible for anyone if they follow the steps I outline in this workshop. We’ll have a few laughs at my expense, too, as I tell you about my learning curve and foibles as I wrote my first book.
I will also provide suggestions for further reading.