After taking a workshop in self editing for a few weeks a while ago, it got me thinking about something. Am I spending too much time editing? When looking at how long it's taken me to get through a round of edits in my Contemporary work got me worried. It's been close to six months to get through it once.
YIKES!
Yes that is a long time but let's do a break down of exactly just how long I'm able to work on it.
So I work a full time day job. That's 40 or more hours a week I'm not able to even tough my manuscript. Add on an hour commute by car one way that's 10 hours a week I can't work on it. Though I do think about things I might want to tweak or whatnot. That leave me oh say if I get home at 6 o'clock on week nights about 3 hours to get some work done. Oh wait, can't forget time to cook dinner and clean up a bit before I need to get to bed. Personally I need a full nights sleep to be able to function properly. So I make sure that I get that 6-8 hours a night. That means on average I can get maybe 2 hours a night if I don't get distracted by real life. In reality that's not a lot of time. But it is something. Then can't forget the weekends. Oh, sweet sweet weekends.
I've cut out a lot of distractions on weekends, i.e going out drinking or clubbing with friends to be able to make the time to get some writing and editing done. This has helped some on the writing front, but not so much in the friend front. Life goes on and that's okay.
Back to the numbers on average in a week I can get maybe 20 hours of editing time. Wow, that is actually a lot of time now that I've broken it down. Grammar not being my forte editing can sometime be a slow process for me. In order for me to be able to get more time with my work since I'm not around a computer all the time, I've printed out my work and make notes by hand. Yup I go old school on my manuscripts before I go back and type up my changes.
Does that count of two rounds of edits? Maybe. I do seem to catch more things while I'm typing up my original changes and now that I have a new list of things to look for and actually reading my work out loud I'm finding that my writing skills are improving. Not drastically but enough that I can notice when I go back to my past works. Put happy dance here. :)
When it comes to my writing and editing I don't set page goals or word counts. Yes, it's nice to be able to bust out ten pages in a day. In reality that isn't always possible and I don't want to get myself down in not being able to reach my goals.
Here are my reasonable workday goals. Get at least one sentence done. Then after that one sentence go to the next one. Even if I can't get one page done I made a baby step. A baby step may be small, but it is progress. Progress is the goal. Large or small it is something. Something that not everyone is able to do.
Weekend goals are larger than workday ones. Get pages. That's right pages done. If I can get more then one page done pat yourself on the back. Personally I want to make more than that, but I'm working on how to work around my focus issues trying to use them to my advantage then against me. One solution to this is that first thing in the morning on weekends I make a pot of tea and sit in the front room before my roommates wake up and get to editing. Little or no music playing. No TV or movies playing, but my full attention to my work. As of late I'm finding that this is working. I've been able to bust out 10 pages on a good morning. 5 on others.
I'm also going to start taking advantage of my old University's library that with the school year has a 24 hour study area for people to use. Not living too far from there and a roommate that still is in school I'm going to use this on weekend, maybe even workdays for a few hours in hope that my productivity will keep rising.
Trial and error is what it's going to take to be able to find the right timing for making my pages faster than what I am doing now. Also the realization that I'm NOT a full time writer means I can't bust out a full edit in a day or month. My skills aren't to that level as of at. It will be. Just not tomorrow.
Realizing your short comings and where you excel. Don't let what other people can do bring you down. I don't. Or try not to. My situation is different from every other writers and as long as I don't over edit that that's all that matters to me. Let it take a long time, but in the end you need to set a limit and just get it done. Get your work out there and see if you can get it published.
Good luck in your editing endeavors! I can't wait to read everyone's work.
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