How to Edit Your Book: Pros and Cons of Doing It Yourself Vs. Paying a Professional

Having been subscribed to the Anne Wayman and Elance for some time (and getting some work from it), I have realised that writing is not just about putting pen to paper (or fingers to laptop as the case is nowadays); it is a whole lot more than that. It requires imagination, discipline, hard work, passion and attention to detail. It is the latter that will be dealt with in this article. Reviewing your work may be a pain the backside but it is a necessary evil. During the course of article and story writing, almost every paragraph is looked over to make sure that it is the best that it can be. So how do you go about it without losing the essence of your work and and your sanity in the process? Do you try and do it yourself or do you call in the professionals (cue the "A-Team" theme tune)?

 Ourbook is almost done so now it is time to turn towards editing it.  And it is a lot harder than people think--especially when it is your own work and even more so when it is your first one. No one likes the idea that the stuff they have spent eight hours a day on for months or even years is not quite up to scratch. But editing is not about destroying a work, it is about making it the best it can possibly be. So which should you go for? Editing the work yourself? Or leaving it to those who do it for a living?

Okay, here I go with another disclaimer because you can never be too careful in this lawsuit-, trigger-happy world. These are just personal observations and experiences and not based on any professional information or research that has been carried out so before anyone jumps up and down and starts berating me, you have been warned:  it's just some advice you might find helpful.

Doing it yourself - what it entails and the pros/cons

At the moment, my coauthor and I are in the process of going through the first draft of the book. So this section will, in the first instance, explain briefly how this is being done. Again, this is something that we have found works for us and the book that has been written. It will not work for every writer and every book. Many find that they prefer to edit each chapter as it is written. This is great too, but in this case, did not work for us. So here is the process being used.

First it is important to say here that the book was written, in the first instance, as a solid block of text divided only when a different character was involved (i.e. telling a different part of the story/telling it from their differing point of view). So the first thing that was needed was to divide it into chapters. The problem here was find natural cut-off points. This was a little easier than we thought, but it was time-consuming. So far, we are well into double figures for the chapters, each with roughly the same number of pages. It is not something that was counted out, but it kind of worked out and saved a lot of work. It may turn out, during the course of editing, that things will have to change but at the moment, it works.

Once the chapter had been determined (name as well as length) we discovered discrepancies, spelling and grammatical errors, characters/situations that we did not need (and additional ones that we did) in order for the book to make sense. We had to be brutal and if you are editing your own book, you have to be too. If emotion is important in writing a book, then some degree of objectivity is very important when editing. I am not saying turn into a cold fish, but ask yourself questions like:

• Does this make sense?
• Do I really need this character/scene/dialogue?
• Can this be made better?
• Would my readers like this?

If any of the answers to the questions is no, then you may need a rethink. You cannot please everyone but things to be coherent and make sense.

Pros

• The main pro for editing it yourself is that you know the book - the characters, the situations, the contexts and the little nuances. So you will know what works and what will not.
• It is relatively inexpensive (financially)

Cons

• It is very very time-consuming
• It can be difficult to be objective and remove (or add) things that you need to
• You may still miss things

Professional Editing - what it entails and the pros/cons

Even though we are in the process of editing this ourselves, we are seriously considering using the services of a professional editor. We have not reached that stage yet. We have been doing some research and have found a site that may be the answer to our literary prayers - www.lulu.com (I just love the name). There have been very good things and some not so flavoursome things written about it. What it does, in a nutshell, is allow writers to self-publish their work and gives them the tools to do so. So for a certain amount of cash (there are certain packages depending on how much you want them to do), you get a range of services from editing to getting an ISBN (you know the bar-code things that you see on products - they even do that for you!).

So why consider this? Well there are several advantages:

• They are professionals and they know what to do. They have been doing it for years.
• They have contacts that could help get the book done and out there faster.
• Less work for you, so you can concentrate either on other projects or on marketing the current one.

Having said all of that, there are some things that you will need to consider before going down this route. I will list the most important ones. They are:

• It does cost money. For a first-time writer, it may not be easy to raise the money
• They may change a lot of the book, losing the core essence of it
• There are a lot of them out there and it can be difficult to choose

So there you have it. Editing is an essential part of writing and needs to be done - whether it is a quick scan of the document to getting professional help. It requires hard work, discipline, flexibility, passion and motivation. It will be daunting at first, but remember like I said editing is not about (or it shouldn't be about) ripping the heart and soul of your writing but to make it the best it can possibly be. I hope this has helped you in some way.

Keep watching this space writers and readers.