The Ongoing Process of Editing is Not My Favorite Thing – But A Good Thing

There is editing to be done – and that means doing it.

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As I’ve been working on Savagespace, I’ve been finishing one book, then moving on to the next (without editing).

Originally, Savagespace was going to be 6 novels (around 200 pages each). However, as I look at the work I’ve done – and compare it to similar genre books I’ve been reading and their total page count – I’ve come to a realization.

I’m barely hitting 200 pages per book (the finished books have been coming in at around 45,000 – 49,000 words). That’s going to make any cutting required – when I start editing – feel extra challenging. That, in part, is because of this question:

Is a novel less than 200 pages long really a novel?

The sci-fi novels I’ve been reading are coming in around 320-450 pages. Hence, it doesn’t appear at all unreasonable for me to take my planned 6-book series – of barely 200-page novels – and turn it into a 3-book series of 400-page novels.

It’s not unreasonable. I can always create a subdivide if there is a significant time jump between books (which, in the instance of Savagespace, I don’t believe is the case).

I’ve finished books 1-3 and am in the midst of writing book 4. I don’t intend to start editing until I’m done with all of the series. That’s in part because I want to correct consistency errors as I go and not interrupt my flow.

But Savagespace is not where I need to attend to editing. There’s another elephant in my room.

The book I left behind

Back in the early 2010s, I got into Steampunk.

This was when the Steampunk Worlds’ Faire was an annual con barely an hour from home. I loved the outfits, and with a group of friends, we all dressed up and cosplayed the Hexad for Hire – a team of Steampunk mercenaries.

When I had an opportunity to create a second pirate-and magic-themed short story for the Spells and Swashbucklers anthology, I turned to Steampunk. This led to a huge amount of worldbuilding. The Vapor Rogues short story was born.

With all that worldbuilding, however – I couldn’t just stop there. I had pages of material about Amasheer, its history, the magic users, the Steampunk/Dieselpunk/Cyberpunk elements, and more. I had to write something bigger.

This would lead to a planned Vapor Rogues series. I wrote and published book one – Clouds of Authority – in May 2016.

For Clouds of Authority, I went to a friend to create the cover art. And while his creation is amazing, the cover I put together with it left something to be desired.

In the summer of 2022, I made a new friend who is an incredible artist. Seeking to improve a finished work, I asked her to make a new cover for Clouds of Authority. In November 2022, I republished with the new, far better cover. (No offense to the artist of the original art from the original cover – but I’ve learned a LOT since 2016 about this process).

The thing is – I completed more than 1 book in the Vapor Rogues. I finished the second book – Clouds of Destiny.

I finished it – but never edited it.

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Editing can sometimes be a total slog for me

I wrote Clouds of Authority in 2011-2012 or 2013. Then I continued and wrote Clouds of Destiny in 2013-2014.

There are numerous reasons I remember why I never went back and edited Clouds of Destiny. But, now that Clouds of Authority has been given a new cover and cleaned up in other ways. I should go back and edit Clouds of Destiny.

Editing my work, at the best of times, can be a slog. Don’t get me wrong – I love what I write and want to produce the best possible work that I can. Thus, editing is absolutely necessary. And it’s a 3-tier process.

I go back and edit my book. Then, it gets sent to a professional editor. After that, I give it another round of edits based on what they return to me.

Editing is almost more important than the writing. If your work isn’t cleaned up via editing, you’re not producing the best thing that you can.

Sometimes editing is easy. I get to revisit the world I created and make it sharper. But often, it can be a total slog.

This is particularly true when editing something I wrote as a pantser.

To clarify – a pantser writes by the seat of their pants. You sit at your computer or with pen and paper and go where the muse takes you. Along the way, you get a finished product.

The opposite of a pantser is a planner. A planner plans their work. This takes different forms and various degrees of detail depending on the author.

Writing as a planner, my process now includes a chapter-by-chapter outline. While many details and directions for moving the plot forward are there – I leave room to write by the seat of my pants when building the book.

Why editing worlds written as a pantser is extra challenging

I have to be totally honest here. When I began The Vapor Rogues as a series, I wrote all of Book 1 without a full understanding of the overarching plot. I had a vague notion, and it developed along the way. But I also wrote most of Book 2 without a full understanding of my overarching plot.

What does that mean? It means there will be extraneous material I should probably remove. It also means that there’s likely to be a bunch of well-meaning rambles I’ll need to clean up.

The trouble is that this makes me cringe a little. I still love the work I did – but I can also clearly see how my writing has changed in the intervening years.

Writing as a planner versus writing as a pantser has had one, key, critical impact. The plot is clearer from the outset. I’m no longer writing just some story where the plot comes along the way – I have it from the outset.

The result of this is greater direction, less rambling, and clearer storytelling on my part. And when going back to edit something written by the seat of my pants – there’s more to consider and work with.

So, no, the ongoing process of editing is not my favorite thing. But it’s necessary and worthwhile. Editing, frankly, makes me a better writer. Ultimately – being the best writer I can be is the goal, isn’t it?

Thanks for reading. How are you inspired to be your own creator – whatever form that takes?

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