I am hot and cold on editing. There are times when I absolutely LOVE the process and others when I would prefer to do anything but.
Regardless of how I feel about them, I have recognized the need to really think about what my editor is asking for. I find if I don’t, I might completely miss their point and either: (a) write something that doesn’t fit the story, (b) write something I’ve already written so it appears more than once in the story, (c) delete some of the stuff that was good, replacing it with bad/worse writing.
In full disclosure, I have done all of those things at one point or another when I tried to rush my edits.
Now I take a more pragmatic approach. I do a multi-pass edit. The first time through is to get a general idea of where I went wrong (and if I repeat the mistake in other places). A second pass is to clean up the easy stuff and the third pass is to go over the items that might need more thorough work.
I know it sounds like a lot (and it is probably more convoluted than the process others do), but it means everything flows better for me. It also means I’m not making some of the mistakes I mentioned earlier. The last thing I want to do is give my editor more work. He/she is usually busy with other people’s books too.
What does your editing process look like?
