Editing the bugger down!

Ahhh, revising.  I don’t mean your friendly little cut and paste and then we’re done.  I mean the fourth-time-through-the-novel kinda rehash. When the written word starts looking like Sanskrit and you find yourself Googling the plural possessive of “ours”--more than once.  I actually woke up this morning from a dream in which I was editing my WIP.  Good Lord, how did I get into this?  I can’t even keep my sock drawer in order, not to mention sixty-five thousand words and all the rotten little dots and dashes that go along with them!  Criminy.  What was I thinking?

I’ve been reading a lot about the revising process lately.  Someone, I’m not sure who, recommended that to find all the typos I should read my manuscript backwards.  Oh yes, his name was Eloh-ssa.  Someone else suggested “it might be worth it” to spend three grand to get a professional edit.  Sorry, but it ain’t worth it in THIS house-hold.  What I really need to do is to stop obsessing on Twitter over the latest contest and go to work so I can afford to buy a new fridge.  The one we’ve got sounds like a clothes-dryer full of tennis-shoes. 

The best technique I have found for editing my manuscript is to submit it to an agent.  Then, when I reread the email I sent said agent, I will spot all the myriad of mistakes that somehow, previously slipped my eye:  A glaring incorrect “their” (it must be auto-correct, right?); the fact that I obviously think colons should be used for digestive purposes only; and the blatant overuse of my characters name as a mind-numbing form of thought-control.  (I really didn’t use it eleven times in the first 250 did I?)  However, this type of editing tends to be counter-productive.

 

So my dear talented Peeps, I thought perhaps you might be willing to throw me a bone and help a fellow writer embarking on this part of the journey.  Listed below are a plethora of questions for which I am seeking answers.  Rather than scan the web for unreliable answers, I thought to ask those writers near and dear to my heart. You have all been so helpful in the past.  I hope to glean as much wisdom as possible from your writerly experience. Feel free to answer all, some or none.  I'll still love you--and more importantly, will still read you.

*How do you know when your manuscript is ready to send to Beta Readers? 

*Do your beta readers check for typos, spelling and grammar or just overall flow and feel?

*Do you send your readers a questionnaire (of sorts) along with the MS ?  

*What questions do you put on said questionnaire?
 
*Do you use Google Docs?

*Do you send it out to one reader at a time, and then fix the whatevers, and then send it out to the next reader or do you cast a wide net?

Many thanks.

~Just Jill
P.S.  My dream-editing was right on.  I axed the whole paragraph this morning.
P.S.S.  Please check out Kirsten Lamb's book, "We Are Not Alone: The Writer's Guide to Social Media" on Amazon here!