Preparing to Edit

Today, I have officially started editing the 4th draft (or is it creating the fourth draft?) of my book.

A delicious cup of coffee (which has been long gone by now), some nice music playing, water close by, and lots of tools. This is the way I like to edit.

Although you can’t see it in the picture very well, the green folder has lots of other writing-related papers in it. The left hand side has miscellaneous research bits for different stories, along with a few helpful writing-related blog posts that I’ve come across in the past. The right hand side is devoted solely to things relating to A Living Shield. It has lots of research papers, history and bits and pieces of things about 66 AD. I also keep the tools I’ve used over the previous edits in there as well.

Editing tools, from left:

• Calendar of the time period (I found it here). I used this extensively when I was working on the the third draft. Since it’s in paper form, I can use a pencil and eraser wherever I need it. This is really helpful in keeping all the times and dates straight! This particular calendar has everything as it’s happened time-wise in the book so far, and currently is accurate. Except that I am changing things, so I needed a…
• New calendar. This is blank, and ready to mark up. I’m sure I’ll be changing some things date-wise as I go, so this will be essential.
• To-do list. This was something I made up in preparation for the 3rd draft. I didn’t use it much, but since I have it I’ll probably refer to it some. It is sorted by color according to how important the item is, which is helpful.
• Plot outline. This is something that I used a LOT last edit. I have everything sorted by chapter, then each bullet point is the synopsis of a particular scene in the chapter. With this, combined with Scrivener, it’s very easy to switch between parts of the book so I can focus on one thing at a time to change. This is just about a life saver.

And you can’t see it in the picture, but I have several other tools that I’m using quite a bit—pens (a friend gave me some fancy pens that I love using for things like this), a good sharp pencil, and two highlighters (which are two different colors). The highlighters were a birthday present, and since they are different colors I can use one to mark “very important” and one for “optional”. I used them to mark the places that really need attention in the plot outline.

Now, I need to get to work again.
~Esther

P.S. The ideas for most of the tools I’m using came from the book 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love. If you’re interested in getting some wonderful writing tips, then I’d highly suggest you buy and read this book.