What I've learned about editing, so far.

What I've learned about editing, so far. ( blog post written the day after Thanksgiving 2011)

What I've learned about editing, thus far. So / thus ? To date, what I've learned about editing. (Damn I write a lot of extra words attempting to say what I mean. :) And guess what nobody edited this page for me. So you have been warned, I'm writing about editing as a writer, not as an editor.

1. Writing is like swimming and words are like water. I consider myself a pretty decent swimmer. Poems are like baths or showers, you can be naked in there, and the rules you usually make up alone, by yourself. Also some people are very good and should share their poetry and others ... well they stink. Prose or private journals are sort of like a hot tub or a private back yard splashing pool. Short stories are like a swimming pool deep enough to dive in or swim laps, here you will start to need to know what you are doing to be professional or compete and you will probably need some bathing attire. Books and decent length research papers are like swimming laps in a olympic sized pool or like swimming across a large lake, it is best not to swim alone, no matter how good a swimmer you are, and you need to have a plan, know what you are doing in the water before you dive in. And Novels, are oceans. Very few swim across alone and live to tell about it.

Yes, I hired an editor for my ocean. Yes I had two beta readers, one reading with me everyday before I posted, (thanks +❤ Janet) and another as I swam my daily laps posting my working draft, (thanks +❤ Art) as a spotter sailing along side to make sure I didn't choke as I made my way across. The more I write, the more I learn how to edit, but it seems with English, I find more new mistakes to make, faster then I get my grammar, punctuation and homophones straightened out.

2. It is not any one person's fault the English language is such an irregular mess.

Quote from one of the largest international studies on spelling done, by tess (the English Spelling Society) http://www.spellingsociety.org/bulletins/b80/spring/research.php

The traditional spelling of English is a very serious cause of failure in the development of literacy skills. More than one half of the children who are failing in their school work today would be saved from this disaster if English spelling were simplified.

For further validation if you struggle with spelling like me or for amusement if you are a good speller, see English spelling irregularities explained by Marsha Bell 2011 http://www.spellingsociety.org/spelling/irregularities

3. The ideal of a perfectly edited novel is a myth. I'm not saying that there aren't some perfectly edited books out there. I'm saying as writer you have to decide when a story is finished. I of course feel I may have failed at this one, because he hardest thing for me to do is let go, and say "it's done". The draft on the web of the blog ode to impossible, as I mentioned before is edited twice by me, then once by a beta reader, and it's still definitely a working draft. Just look at the numbers.

Ode draft on blog: August 25, 2011

chapter 1. 12,905 words / 70,937 characters
chapter 2. 18,736 words / 103,142 characters
chapter 3. 16,068 words / 88,416 characters
chapter 4. 60,923 words / 331,457 characters
chapter 5. 18,866 words / 102,624 characters
Total: 127,498 words / 696,576 characters

Then after printed out a copy and I went over the entire book with an ink pen, then went back in and made changes and then read the book out-loud to myself for a third pass, the documents I sent to my editor, the numbers look like this.

Documents to editor: September 19, 2011.

chapter 1. 13,111 words / 71,767 characters
chapter 2. 18,671 words / 102,372 characters
chapter 3. 17,813 words / 97,904 characters
chapter 4. 61,156 words / 329,430 characters
chapter 5. 18,968 words / 102,092 characters
Total: 129,725 words / 703,617 characters

Then after reading over the returned documents and removing thousands of invisible tabs and invisible like breaks the final, final doc was 129,202 words, and 702,649 characters.. yes smashwords only counted 127,800 something, I guess they consider that approximate enough.
I have now search and replaced for tabs a third time, this pass had got to be it.. we'll see. Happy Thanksgiving everybody. 

Update as of December 3rd, 2011. I'm very proud and happy to report that my beta reader only found 4 errors in the entire book, and I HAVE JUST FIXED THEM ALL. The e-book for book one is done and on the professional catalogue. Still jumping through publishing catch 22s on the paper book. Sort of a good news / bad news.. but, I'm just getting started. There's always a steep learning curve to do things well. And this post is about editing not about being a publisher and marketing. Finishing future novels and learning about marketing is next.

Gotta keep swimming, and finish Book 2. I’m half way back home across this ocean of words again, thanks for reading.

☮❤ @Uva_Be

P.s. a shout out to my editor Shanti Maharaj @EbookTherapist :) thanks