Based on personal experience, I would say the first thing you should do is walk away from it for a while, as @TWErvin2 suggested. It may seem like you're wasting time, but you're not. If you start right in tinkering, you are very likely to be too close to it to actually 'see' the thing with fresh eyes, and the changes you make will need to be changed themselves, later on. You'll be remembering how you felt when you wrote it. Instead, try to get yourself to the point where it surprises you, all over again. Then you will be able to be ruthless with cuts, you'll spot errors more readily, you'll be more aware of where the story drags or where it needs fleshed-out. But first of all, congratulations! Having finished a novel, even at an early stage of editing, is a great feeling, isn't it? And a huge accomplishment. Until it was written by you, that story and those characters didn't exist. Now it does, and they do. So back off and celebrate a bit. You deserve it. Everybody works differently, but I wouldn't give the thing to others to read until you've had a chance to go over it at least once yourself. The more 'finished' the product is when you hand it to somebody else for feedback, the more helpful the feedback will be. Your beta readers should be engaging in character development and story flow issues, rather than correcting your spelling and punctuation. See what you can do about correcting these things yourself, before you hand it out. It's only courteous to give your friends and helpers the 'best,' most polished story you can.
This is a really excellent idea. I tried it last night and it radically changes the way you see things! Another thing I noticed is that when you go to a different place---like say a library or park or something, you get a different angle again. I'm not sure if that works for everyone and I guess it's kind of obvious, but something about a library makes you take everything more seriously.
@Leaka : congrats !! Be proud, you are a real writer now. Now put it away for a while (you can't) and then after a few days read it as it were written by someone else (again, you can't). Have a look at the "What's your writing process" thread for ideas on how to proceed now. @aikoaiko : change the font type, font size, line spacing and make the page wider or narrower until the text looks totally different. If you want to go the hardcore way read backwards : starting from the end and read towards the start sentence-by-sentence. It is hard but this way you will concentrate only on that one sentence and won't be distracted by the story. This helps only to catch spelling and grammar errors though.
Absolutely. I can vouch for this from personal experience as well. You really do need to get away for a while. Either work on another project (or even just start thinking about one) or immerse yourself in some good reading, removed from the subject matter of your story. This recharges the emotional batteries and also helps you to approach editing with a fresh perspective. @jannert's point about remembering how you felt when you wrote it is spot on. And the effect of that is that you skim more than you should. I am currently editing my WIP. I actually printed it out in the same format in which I will ultimately submit it - double spaced, a 12 point serif font, 1-inch margins on both sides (to leave room for notes). Before I started, I wrote out an edit plan. On my first read-through, I made notes and marks in red pencil. Where I had more than a few words of comment, I used yellow post-it notes. Since mine covers 500 years, I also kept a running list of character names by chapter (and found some duplicates!). I also noted a couple of anachronisms (including someone who had died and suddenly re-appeared!). I have now read through the whole thing once, some sections several times, and made all the corrections I had noted. I'm now about to read through it a second time, this time aloud. My first few attempts at novels, I wasn't nearly this organized. I just kept reading through, time after time, correcting what I thought needed to be corrected. Editing habits evolve over time as we find what works best. I also agree with @mammamaia - if at all possible, you should do as much editing as possible yourself. No one knows your story as well as you do. It's different if your story is accepted for publication and the publisher's editor goes to work on it, because by then the story idea has matured and what the editor gets is an integrated whole (that doesn't mean that elements of the story won't change, but your understanding of them will be complete). A professional editor at the formative stage isn't going to have that fully integrated whole to work with, thus assuring that the editing job will be in some ways superficial. Congratulations on finishing. I remember how I felt when I finished my first novel's first draft. Good luck with the edit.
I'll echo those who say to get some space from it. It's invaluable. I'd also recommend taking this time to hone up on editing skills--most easily done by critiquing pieces here. Even just reading others' critiques will be helpful. As @mammamaia said, editors don't come cheap. You're going to have to do the bulk of the editing yourself, and it'll help to have a lot of practice before going at your own work with the metaphorical machete. You're the cheapest editor you're going to find, but if you aren't familiar with the typical issues that most writers face you won't know how best to edit your piece. And you'll only learn about the common writing issues by being made aware of them. The distance also gives you a chance to disengage from the world you've created, so that you can come at it fresh. Unless you have a really good memory, there'll be parts you forgot about and passages you don't remember writing. The emotion will be new again. You can approach it more like a reader, and that'll help keep you objective. Every time I finish a new piece I go through and do new drafts of all my old pieces before touching the new one again. It gives me plenty more to think about as I edit and plenty of time to let the new one sit. Although, now that I'm on my fourth, it might be too much time anymore. But most of all, feel good about finishing. There are plenty of people who set out to write a novel and never do. You're not one of them anymore. Now you're someone who has written. Congrats!
Well I will confess. I did edit a tiny amount already of the project. But I did start another a new project as well. Which I think is going pretty well.
When you guys say put your MS away for awhile, do you mean you should be doing no writing at all in the meantime, or that you should immediately revert to another project? I can see the point of both because they take your mind away from the project, but is it better to remove yourself from writing completely to 'recharge', so to speak? I always feel like I have a finite amount of energy here, and if I don't stop at times (even for a day or so occasionally) I begin to get fried. On the other hand, I can't possibly imagine not doing anything at all for 6 weeks or whatever amount of time they say to leave it. Xanadu talked about reading and critiquing during the layover and I think that's a great idea, but do you think most people (published authors included) should walk away from everything they're doing?
For me, it means working on another piece. But that depends on my mood. Sometimes writing can be so exhausting that I want to take a break from it for a few days. And that's perfectly fine.
Leaka, if you wanted someone here to read it for you and give thoughts, I'd be more than happy to help you out. Even the first few chapters or something. One thing that's made me consider: copyrighting it so nobody can steal it. At this stage I'm not sure how you do that, and even though I should have looked into that... I'm just aware I haven't!
It could be either. In my recent case, I poked at an old project that I had shelved and thought about taking it up again, but decided instead to do some reading and other recreational stuff. With past projects, I have sometimes driven right into another project.
you should know that everything you write is automatically copyrighted as soon as it's completed... all that's done after that is to 'register' the existing copyright... and that's done by your publisher, when the book is printed... there's no good reason to do so prior to that, since the work is already protected by copyright... all new writers should familiarize themselves with the copyright and trade mark basics: www.copyright.gov www.uspto.gov the UK's version is nearly the same and all other signatory countries to the berne convention will have similar laws...
@mammamaia : you need to be able to provide proof that the book is written by you and it may not be easy against a tricky publisher. In my country there is an organization which files a manuscript for about $20 and in case of copyright problems they can prove that you gave it to them. In case someone publishes your book under his name you can claim it back. I'm sure there's something similar in every country, though I would not rush to them with the first draft.
as i mentioned above, registering one's copyright is done by the country's governing entity, which is the library of congress in the US... in the UK, it's the british library... companies that offer to 'file a ms' for a fee are only making money on clueless writers who don't know their country's official governing entity is the proper place to do so... and having your work archived with any of those 'filing' outfits may not be acceptable proof in court... that said, the chances that anyone will claim someone else's unpublished book/whatever as their own are so slim that it's not something one needs to worry about... and, in the US, you only need to have your copyright registered before bringing suit against the perpetrator... the best, most legally recognized way to prove you wrote something is to keep your first jotted down idea notes, along with your first draft and at least one hand-edited subesquent printed-out draft, which will show the development of your book from the germ of an idea to the finished product... and no publisher is going to steal books, vandor... all they do is publish them... they don't have writers on staff waiting to steal some poor submitter's ms and put their name on it, so the publisher won't have to pay the writer royalties... there's no way they could get away with such a thing...
And in Hungary it's the organization (not company) I mentioned ( http://www.sztnh.gov.hu/English/szerzoijog/onkentes/ ) Yepp, that is the way to go. You have these already and why would you delete them? It is also a good idea to make backups of different stages of the work. For yourself, in case a revision goes terribly wrong But someone may/will do it, otherwise there is no point of the copyright laws.
