Oh Look I have an Editeor

This is not my picture

I learned how to write during National Novel Writing Month.  NaNoWriMo is a challenge were you try to write a 50,000 word novel in one month.  You tone out that inner-editor and write like there is no tomorrow.  I got pretty good at that.  My inner-editor was almost forgotten after four years of not listening to her.  But then this year I started editing.  In all those past years only once did I edit one of my short stories and then I simple got my big sister to read it and tell my what was wrong.  Not really the same as editing it myself.  Most of the time I never reread any of my writing.  The book was just filed away in a folder in the very deep places of my computer.  All last year I was getting pushed to edit.  My sister would look at my writings and tell me that I really should edit.  Friend who I would tell about my stories would tell me to edit.  My grandparents would read one of my books and say 'Morgan you should really edit this'.  But it took a complete stranger to get it through my head.  I took a writing class with a local author and she read some of my stuff.  She was impressed and told me I should really start editing. "You need to stop writing and finish the books you already have."  I had never thought of it that way, but she had a good point.  My books weren't as I had thought finished.  They were only a ruff draft.  Like a raw diamond that hasn't been cut or polished.  A stranger telling me that woke me up and I finally acted on all the advise that everyone else had been giving me all year.  Editing posed a new problem that I had never in countered before; how do you edit?  It took me a few months but I managed to rewrite the whole plot outline for the first Nightin book, and slowly I began rewriting.  I'm still puttering away on it but every so often I hear my inner-editor pointing out something that can be easily changed.  She is waking up and I'm rather enjoying the help.  It's like having a spell check system in your head that points out confusing sentences and weak scenes.  I don't hear her often but maybe that's just because I don't know how to listen.  This summer I made the goal of 10,000 edited words and right now I'm only half done, but if I can write 50,000 words in one month I can surly edit 5,000 in the same time.  it's all a work in progress.

Have a blessed week
Morgan J