Putting The Cart Before The Horse
It’s something I tend to do often as I’m not a very patient person. Case in point: I sent my story off to a professional editor before having it beta read. The result: Lots and lots, and LOTS of red. Not only that I spent a good chuck of money before I needed too. It’s O.K. though, this is my first book and I’ve always been pretty good at the “live and learn” method.
That being said I’m extremely grateful to have found Jenna Moreci. She’s not only a great writer but she shares her knowledge about everything from writing to marketing on her Vlog. It was because of her that I found out I had made this mistake. To see the video that clued me in, check out her Vlog post “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Beta Readers.” She does curse a lot in her videos but they’re always entertaining and informative.
One reason for my blog is to let you know about my mistakes so you don’t have to make them yourself. So here’s what happened. I thought my story was pretty much done. Sure, there were a few plot points I was unclear about, and I was still going back and forth on whether one of my characters was a good guy or bad guy… but other than that I was done…. nope. So not done. Unfortunately, I was so excited about the thought of finally being finished with a story and making the decision to actually go ahead and publish it that I went and hired a professional editor.
Shortly afterward I found someone on the NaNoWriMo forums that said she would read my story and give me some feedback. My first Beta Reader! As she went through the story and we chit-chatted about the issues she was finding I began to realize my story was NOT done. Not even close. A few weeks after that my editor sent back my story and all the lovely redness that was her corrections. There were of course many pages with no red at all, but I must admit, it’s a little disconcerting to see this much lined out, especially at the beginning of the story.
I’m not really upset though, because while she pointed out a lot of problems she also gave me a lot of great ideas on how to fix them. So that’s what I’ll be doing for the next weeks or months, however long it takes to go through it all. During this time I won’t abandon you. I have a lot to learn about the publishing and marketing process so stay tuned for posts about those. I also am considering posting about the revising process as well. I won’t give you spoilers on my book, but hopefully I’ll learn some neat tips to make revising less painful and will pass those along to you.
