My August Writing Plan

Yesterday I finished line-editing my YA fantasy manuscript. I have to level with myself: my progress was initially so slow because I was afraid that much of this draft would be subpar. Writers often bemoan the redrafting process, but do you know what’s often not talked about?

The fact that your writing improves with each new draft.

By the time I had made it about halfway through line-editing, I realized that I was happy with a lot of the changes I had made. I do have plot elements to clean up and description that’s lacking in sections, but (it feels like a miracle to type this out…) I’m so proud of this draft.

Once I realized I was happy with it, I decided to power-edit over the weekend — which seeped into Monday — so that I could get on with implementing all of my edits.

It doesn’t hurt that I have a very strict timeline to deal with. I want to get this draft as “final” as possible before my baby is due this fall.

To that end, I’m going to be aggressive with my August writing plan:

• WEEK 1: go through my manuscript on Google Docs and add the edits I wrote down by hand last month.

  • Make grammar & formatting edits immediately

  • Comment with more time-consuming changes like continuity fixes and description additions

• WEEK 2: edit triage.

  • Set up spreadsheet and assign effort-level to each chapter with edits required (silver lining: edit-free chapters go in here too and make me feel like I’ve already made progress!)

  • Start tackling the biggest “problem chapters” first.

• WEEK 3: do the work!

• WEEK 4: do the work! (continued). Once I’ve wrapped it up, consider the overarching themes of the different edits I’ve made. Do they point to any deeper flaws in the story that I need to address?

• SEPTEMBER: send to beta readers and await feedback!

As I’m writing this out, I realize I’m tackling this like a work project and definitely not from a linear story perspective. This is just what works for me — I know many writers who like to go chapter-by-chapter, others who just open to a page they feel like working on that day, and others who plan much more meticulously than I am here.

I’d love to know in the comments what your editing process is like!