Let’s face it.
Writers hate to edit.
We want to write novels.
We often have a backlog, and sometimes can’t resist poking in novel number six, while still working on other novels. The last thing we want to do is sit and edit. (rolls eyes)
Well, here’s the bottom line. It’s all daydreams and hobby writing until you have something to sell.
And before you can sell it, you have to get it to a point where it CAN be sold.
Yes, we all day dream of the interview with our agent who says, “why, his writing is so good, his rough drafts are other people’s finished copy!” well, in reality, that’s a form of procrastination! If you daydream that your rough draft is perfect, you’re trying to convince yourself NOT to get it perfect, so you don’t have to risk rejection letters!
So, here’s what I’m doing right now.
I’m taking one scene at a time in two separate novels, and editing them with ProWritingAid. Yes, you heard that right.
ProWritingAid.
Why not Grammerly? Grammerly is good – but I’m trying to do multiple checks and edits at the same time. Grammerly focuses on Grammar, but ProWritingAid does so much more.
Open Scrivener, copy a scene and paste it into ProWritingAid.
Start your checks backwards. I go right to the last one on the right hand side, and run that check first. Those three checks (pronoun, pacing) actually do most of your writing work for you. Let’s face it, fixing the grammar on it isn’t going to do you any good when you’ve got a slow paced paragraph. If you go left to right in ProWritingAid, you’re going to have to start all over again by the time you reach the end!
My first novel has a LOT of slow paced paragraphs, and a lot of initial pronoun use. That requires a lot of fixing. Since it’s the first novel I’ve started and actually completed, this is the proving grounds where I worked out my flaws – or my second novel did. I’ll find out once I edit that.
So start on your checks on the RIGHT hand side of the tool bar. Right to left, just as if you read Hebrew! Don’t go too much into depth on this. Right now we’re just trying to fix the worst writing errors.
I’ll give you a hint – the one I can’t wait to get to is Thesaurus. That one will highlight all of the parts of speech. I use this to choose more deliberate power verbs. Very often, this is all a lackluster scene needs to shine!
Passive verbs are the death of me, apparently. Very often, ProWritingAid fixes it for me – but there are times the program throws up its hands and says to me, “You do know how to write, yes?”
I can edit a scene in 15-20 minutes using ProWritingAid. And the great part is when I copy my edited work and paste it back into Scrivener (CTRL+SHIFT+V), and see my word counts go down.
So, 30-40 minutes of editing a night TOPS, and then I’m in my latest novel throwing down passive verbs with reckless abandon!
It’s okay. I’ll fix that in ProWritingAid.
