Last week I was mostly editing Forbidden Blood, an upcoming vampire romance novel that should be out around the end of April 2011. Originally, I had intended it to be a light edit, more like a polish than anything else, but it has turned out to be more like a full edit. There’s quite a bit I want to add to the story, layering in more description and information so readers will get more out of the story, and intensifying certain scenes between the vampire hero and human heroine. Because I’m doing a full edit on the story, I was behind schedule at the end of the week. It’s difficult to measure how long edits take, but usually a full edit takes me around the same amount of time as it took to write the first draft, or maybe just a little less.
On Friday, I had reached page 74 out of around 270, and had added around 6000 words into the story. On Saturday, I had an ear appointment in the city, so I went to the area where my husband works (he works on Saturdays) afterwards and went to Starbucks there. I spent 8 hours in Starbucks and managed to get 56 more pages edited, reaching my page 130 goal. It doesn’t sound like much progress, but I actually edited 25000 words of the story, and the amount of words added reached 10000, so the story was then at around 118000 words long.
Sometimes editing is slower than we like it to be, but I guess it’s the price we pay for being thorough. Adding in extra details and information, or improving characters, always takes time, and when I see how many words I’ve added to the story (considering that I’m also taking words away too), I don’t feel as though I’m on a go-slow.
Saturday was an interesting test though. I had wanted to see how many pages / words I could comfortably edit in a full working day ahead of my turning full time author at the end of February. It was good to see that when I’m editing quite harshly, really taking time to craft the words and sharpen the story, that I could get through that many pages. I don’t intend to edit for 8 hours a day though. It was more like seeing what I could accomplish with 4 or 5, as I knew that eight hours would be extremely tiring, and it was. At the end of the evening, I was completely bushed, not fit for anything other than laying on the couch staring at the TV. That’s not how I want to feel at the end of the work day when I’m writing, so I’ll cap my editing at around 4 or 5 hours a day, dependent on how much work I have to do. If I’m pushed for time and desperately need to get an edit turned around quickly, I now know that I could spend a week in Starbucks doing 8 hours a day and get it done (most of my novels are around 80000 to 125000 words).
Unfortunately, it means I’m miles behind on my other work–interviews, articles, guest blogging, sending books out for review, and building my author platform, amongst other things. I have a lot to do between now and Feb 10th when I have my ear op, including preparing content for my Vampires for Valentines month over at the Vampires Realm blog – http://vampiresrealm.blogspot.com – that will see a daily post of goodies for everyone to read in the lead up to the release of Hunter’s Moon.
I’d better get my head down today and crack on with these edits then!
