Stacey J. Mitchell

Aside from a final read-through, it looks like Red Threads is more or less ready to be released into the world. This is both exciting and scary, and it seems to have happened all of a sudden.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was discussing the various stages of editing with the editor I had chosen to work with, and working out a rough schedule. Then she sent the line edit back to me at the end of last week. This week, I have been making the suggested amendments to my manuscript.

By the way, if you ever need an editor to help with any aspect of your writing, look up Brenda Errichiello, the Eclectic Editor. You can also find her on Twitter (and probably other places too, but they’re the ones I use). Her website has recently had a revamp and is now purple–as you can imagine, this makes me very happy.

I can’t tell you how wonderful she is! She has given me so much help and support through the editing process. In her initial critique, she outlined the good bits and the bad bits, and most importantly she gave me ideas of how to address the bad bits. I was terrified of working with an editor who might point out what needed to be changed, but not tell me how to go about it.

I have discovered over the past two or three months that I have a lot to learn about the technicalities of novel writing and don’t have all the tools I need to go it alone (not that I want to). More than ever, I am convinced that anyone thinking of self-publishing should work with an editor. We know way less than we think we do, and I was making mistakes that I didn’t even realise were mistakes…

She has advised that now is the time to stop editing. It’s a good thing she said this, otherwise I suspect I might have fallen into a vicious cycle of non-stop tweaking: delete this word, add it back in, etc. You can only improve something so much without starting from scratch. And ultimately, I’m pleased with the book that I’ve ended up with.

(Now it’s time for my harshest critic to read it for the first time–Mum. I’m always amazed by people who have been told they’re brilliant at something by their mother, when they’re clearly not. Like those deluded people on the X Factor or any other ‘talent’ show. My mum tells it EXACTLY how it is, good OR bad…)

The only way to really improve your whole novel-writing process is to write more novels, so I’m drafting the second book in the series. I jumped in head first for Camp NaNoWriMo but stalled around 29,000 words in. So I’m going back to the drawing board to do what I love–some proper planning.

Before I get too stuck into that, I want to announce that I have decided on June as the release month for Red Threads. I’m not going to be any more specific than that at this point, as I have things to organise for the launch between now and then. So we’ll stick with June for now, and I’ll share a more specific date nearer the time. (Eep!)

I’ve talked about myself a lot for the past few weeks (months?!), so I want to turn it over to you in the comments below. Tell me, what are you working on at the moment?

Tags: Editing, Red Threads