Self-Editing a Novel (Another of Life's Joys?)

In an ideal world, an author should not edit his or her own book. First of all, we're too biased toward our own words. When I'm writing, I love (absolutely love) what I've written (mostly). It's the writer's high. In my case, I was in awe that I could actually do it. "Wow! How did I come up with that? I'm great!"

Of course, that's what's known as the first stage of grief, although we don't yet recognize it as such. Denial.

It's not that what we've just written isn't great, but we're living in the "now", the thrill. Plus, our brains take a lot of liberties in filling in the blanks. We know how the story goes, but we sometimes forget that no one else does. I think I'm incapable of reading my manuscript as a reader. I try. Will a reader get this part? Do I need to spell it out more? "Well, of course they'll get it. It's perfectly clear"...to me.

Even when we do recognize a manuscript's flaws, we might not know how to fix them. I really struggled, and failed, with Running From Herself's saggy middle. I knew something was wrong, but I wanted to keep certain scenes; I felt they needed to be included for continuity, so I wrote and rewrote them, and basically ended up where I started. Maybe I should have ditched those scenes all together, and a developmental editor probably would have told me that.

My professional reviewer courteously tried to sugarcoat it:

"While the plot occasionally meanders, particularly during Leah’s time in Nashville, in some ways this actually serves to reinforce the protagonist’s sense of displacement and uncertainty." 

I knew right away which scenes she was referencing. 

I don't need, and wouldn't pay for a copy editor. A combination of spellcheck (although watch out for that!) and my own eyes and brain tells me if there's a misspelling or an incorrect subject-verb conjugation. A developmental editor, on the other hand, would help solve my issues or at least point me in the right direction. Alas, developmental editors are expensive; too expensive for my meager budget, plus all editors are not created equal. What if I hated all of his or her suggestions? I'm not about to completely rewrite my novel to satisfy one person's opinion.

I've thus self-edited all my books, and since the majority of them are novellas, it was never a really difficult task. Novels, though? Yikes. It's like the old Vaudeville act of a guy spinning plates on tall sticks. Just when you catch one of them from falling, three more are teetering on the brink. 

When I set out to edit my latest novel, I ignored the advice to "let it rest". Who can do that? I compromised and ignored it for about three days. (I don't think that's what they mean.) I was already aware of three big issues: the opening, that stupid saggy middle, and the scenes from Leah's mini-tour in Texas. I hardly succeeded with those. In fact, I really didn't change the last two much, if at all. My opening was reworked about ten times, and while I somehow managed to make it better, it's far from perfect.

Unlike me, you may want to follow some editing tips, so here is a decent article. Here and here are a couple of others that combine copy editing and content editing. 

Truthfully, the biggest thing that helped me was this: Read Aloud. I write in Microsoft Word, which has a text-to-voice feature, and I listened to my manuscript being read back to me so many times, I wanted to strangle that faux-woman. Nevertheless, how words sound in your head can sound much, much different when read aloud. It truly is like having a second "reader", or beta, except the beta is you. Listening doesn't allow you to fill in the blanks like you do when you're adding pieces of the story that only exist inside your head. You also reap the added benefit of finding those stubbornly overlooked words that spellcheck didn't find, because they're actual words; just the wrong ones. I remember listening to a passage and thinking, "Wait ~ what? That doesn't make any sense. Did she mispronounce it?" Nope; I'd inadvertently typed a wrong word. 

In 2025, a developmental editor costs, on average, $2,700.00 for an 80,000-word manuscript. Mine is a bit over 114,000 words, and according to the calculator found here, I would be paying $3,565.00. Are you kidding? It's one thing to be serious about your career; quite another to be delusional. At a 60% royalty rate, I would need to sell 1,991 copies just to break even (and only on the editing piece).

I don't have a lot of advice to offer other self-editors, other than to listen to your manuscript being read back to you. As for openings, for the longest time I couldn't make mine work. It wasn't back story, per se, that I originally started with, but more of a grounding; showing what transpired to drive Leah's decision to quit the band and take to the road. While a lot of it was quite good, once I got further into the story, it seemed draggy and superfluous. "Maybe I'm starting in the wrong place," I finally said to myself. Ding! Ding! Ding! That was it! So I rewrote the beginning to have her on the road in the middle of the night and pulling into a truck stop. This was the actual beginning of her journey. As for those first anecdotes, I wove some of them in throughout the story, but much more condensed. Those details were important in explaining her actions, but this time they were written as her recollections, and interspersed judiciously.

So, if one of your self-editing conundrums is your opening, try starting the story in another place.

Any other struggles, well, that's what my links are for.