The Editing Ordeal

So I’ve finished editing the final version of my upcoming self-published novel, Sirens, and the process absolutely sucked. 

Writers famously say that writing is a pain. You’d have a hard time finding one that claims that it’s an easy and fun pastime. In fact, Ernest Hemingway once said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” And while I think writing is challenging and often a labor of love (emphasis on the “labor”), I think editing is my true enemy. 

Hiring an Editor

Granted, I have edited Sirens multiple times before this last round. It’s been through at least three drafts up until this point with many runs through Grammarly. I’ve even done the old trick of reading it out loud to myself to hear how it sounded. The version of Sirens I started with years ago is simply not the one I have today. For this final editing stretch, I decided to hire a professional editor to provide corrections and feedback, and it was definitely an educational experience. 

My editor was a woman named Sasha on Reedsy who provided me with copy and developmental edits. Admittedly, she said she had fewer markups than what is typically expected (I guess those nights looking at Sirens until my eyelids felt like sandpaper were somewhat worth it), but I was still wading through a sea of red at some points. Which is what I paid for when I hired her, of course, but it still felt like a special form of self-punishment every time I sat down in front of my computer. 

I definitely think a professional opinion helped, though. For instance, for as many hours as I spent evolving this book, I didn’t realize how often I said the words “for a moment” or “as if” until Sasha pointed it out. It was also great to hear a fresh perspective from someone who wasn’t a friend or family member that felt obligated to compliment my writing and overlook its flaws. 

If you have the means to hire an editor, I suggest doing so. It was pretty expensive, with the total hovering around $2000, but I think having an unbiased opinion is important before publishing. I think the investment was worth it.

Staying Stubborn

However, I won’t lie and say that a bit of defensiveness didn’t rise up during the process. I met some of her comments with an instinct to dismiss them. Of course, this is natural for any creator. There’s a knee-jerk reaction to play the misunderstood-artist card. And I will admit that while I applied most of her edits, there were some I couldn’t bring myself to change. In an attempt to maintain character choice, overall voice, or light foreshadowing, some of her suggestions were dismissed. For better or worse, I suppose that is for you to decide this fall. 

In Conclusion

I think overall this editing experience was beneficial if not acutely painful. It’s for the best, but being confronted with shortcomings and feedback is always a brutal process. The time it took to apply Sasha’s edits AND read the new manuscript out loud again for a final run-through was a unique sort of hell. I’m certainly not looking forward to enduring the seemingly endless hours it takes to complete it again. 

But as I’ve always said, writing is 75% editing what you’ve already written. Hopefully, these long hours will be worth it soon!

Sirens is now available for preorder! I can’t wait for you all to read it!