Editing Athanasia

Before providing a progress update on Cooking Athanasia, I should probably explain my editing process to provide some context. As most of you know, I wrote the final sentence in the book on April 5^th of this year. I shelved the book for three weeks before beginning any editing to give myself a little distance, which I’m hoping provides more objectivity. After the three weeks elapsed, I began editing with chapter 7 because the first six chapters had already received a precursory pass before being published in this blog.

While writing, I print each chapter when I finish it so I have a hard copy for backup, and to make editing notes as I think of them. I take the binder with my hard copy novel with me everywhere so I can do mark ups whenever I find some idle time. As such, my editing process has two steps. The first is the markup for changes on the hardcopy and any significant additions are handwritten on a sticky note and stuck on the appropriate page. The second step is making the changes on the electronic copy where I also rewrite items not identified during the markup phase.

Marked up page complete with sticky note.

Although I had been doing some of the rewriting when I was at home (it has to be done on my desktop (this is another plea for Scrivener to release the IOS app, please!)), and doing the markups when I found spare time away from home, I finished the markups this past Sunday. This means only rewrites left for this editing iteration and I am on chapter 12 now, which was a monster chapter that I divided into three chapters during the rewrite. Another ancillary benefit to finishing the markups is that I am able to pick up work again on the sequel, Echoes of Enchantment, when I am away from home. I really don’t want to forecast when I might finish the rewriting phase on this pass of editing, but I think it will be close enough to done a the end of July so I can pitch it at the Northwest Writers Association Conference, which I hope to attend.

Thanks for reading!

~K