TJ-Ready Draft Complete

Written 7/25/09

Well, I finally have a draft that is ready – or as ready as it’s going to be – for eyes other than my own. It has taken me a mere 9+ months to get from my first draft to this TJ-ready draft. Once he’s had a chance to look it over, I expect to have another round of editing before I pass it out to a broader group of friends. It is both an exciting and terrifying prospect.

How do I know the book is ready for other eyes, anyway?
Because I’m sick of editing it, that’s why.
Besides, any additional polishing that I do now might just be wasted, since I know that I will be making changes based on people’s suggestions. My goal was to get it polished enough that they wouldn’t be distracted by little (or not so little) problems. This way they will – hopefully – focus on the story itself.

To get here I’ve gone through a variety of editing rounds:

1) Quick read-through on the computer. The goal of this was to get an impression of the book as a whole, and to fix any really minor problems.
2) More extensive read-through on the computer, noting more extensive problems that needed to be addressed (things that needed clarifications, transitions, more information, etc.).
3) Go through and actually make the changes noted in #2.
4) Go through and make sub-headings noting what was going on at a given time (usually 3-4 per normal Word page).
5) Print out table of contents showing chapters and sub-headings, and try to adjust the story line’s flow with this meta-view.
6) Go through and make the changes that came out of #5.
7) Print it out and give a quick read-through, jotting notes.
8) On same print-out, do a more thorough read-through (out loud where possible), making more extensive notes of changes large and small.
9) Go through and make easy changes noted in #7 and #8.
10) Go through and make the harder changes noted in #7 and #8. Ad nauseum.
11) Print it out again, in spiral-bound book form ($50 from Kinko’s – I was rather amazed at how expensive it was, but for a 400-odd page book plus binding . . . well . . . couldn’t cavil too much. It did make me go looking for a different source for my distribution copies, though).
12) Try to read it as a book, rather than an editing project.
13) Make minimal fixes noted in #12.
14) Make formatting changes and tweaks to get a copy printed at Lulu.com (as a real book!) for the TJ editing round – both cheaper and snazzier looking.

Whew!
I’m ready to get back to some actual writing, now. I’ll probably start on the next story sometime next week.
This time I’ll probably try to do a little more editing along the way (e.g. 5 minutes for every 30 minutes of writing). Maybe that will cut down on the 13 month turnaround from project start to TJ-edition. I can hope.