Just a quick question. When writing your book, do you write the whole thing first and then edit from the beginning until the end? So, you haven't seen your early chapters since you first messily wrote them. Or do you write your book and edit as you go? So, you occasionally go back to the beginning and edit your early chapters.
Yes. Finish writing first, then edit. The most perfectly edited first chapter means nothing if you the story stops immediately thereafter.
I tell myself I should write the whole thing and then go back and edit. I do not do this. Having stuff on the page I want to change bugs the hell out of me. The best compromise I've found is basically pretending I've edited it, and carrying on the story as if all the changes I wanted to make are already in there, then going back later and adjusting things as necessary.
Same, I stick notes highlighted in yellow (so I don't miss them) in roughly where I expect the change to be and carry on.
I'm with Nige. I'd like to say that I stick to the ideal of plowing forward until the end and only then beginning the editing passes, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way. Sometimes you realize your story hits a rough patch because of something that has its roots way at the beginning and there's not much point in plowing ahead until you go back and take care of that foundational issue.
I usually edit as I go, but lightly, looking for typos/misspellings and obvious continuity errors. Once the whole manuscript is done, I then do a much more detailed edit, looking at the book as a whole.
I would say the consensus is , finish each draft before you start editing . In reality most do some editing as they write . The danger of combining editing and writing is to never finish writhing anything .
I believe in cycling back as I go. That way, if I change something in an earlier chapter, that change is reflected down the road. If I waited till the ms was done, I'd forget that it was this I wanted my characters to do at such and such a point, and not that, as originally written. And if I kept the original ideas in, intending to change them during the edit, the plot would be a tangled mess. Not to say I'm trying to get the thing perfect on the first draft, but at least this way all the elements I want are in there and I'm not sorting out alternative worlds.
I haven't finished my own books, but did plenty of college papers. One of my favorite English professors (who has written books himself) mentioned that any writing should start as a free writing phase. You write it all, beginning to end, no edits. This way, your ideas aren't inhibited by you correcting your writing and sentences and frustrating yourself every few seconds/minutes/whatever. When you have added all your ideas and are finished, then comes down the editing hammer. Personally, I have a hard time with this. I will write something and be like, "Nah, I don't like the sound of that," and immediately fix it, but this can be an awful habit and then it takes me longer to get all my ideas out that I want to write about so I forget some of the good ones in the process. This creates frustration. I mean, I am still working on a writing that I wrote 11 years ago - that should tell you something here. I'm planning on getting to the publishing in the near future, but I nit picked an awful lot for too long of a time. Writing it all down and then editing seems to be the best approach.
