Currently taking a break from Inheritance of Magic #5 to work on the edits for Inheritance of Magic #4. I’m actually enjoying it; edits are hard work (significantly harder than a first draft) but they also make an enormous difference. Even relatively small editorial changes (maybe changing 5% or less of the book’s total wordcount) can hugely improve the final result.
For instance, one very common thing to find in first drafts is beginnings of plot threads that don’t go anywhere. Usually this is something that happens organically – while you’re writing the first draft, you include something as a potential plotline that you’re thinking of developing in some way. Then things change – either the story goes in a different direction to the one you were expecting, or you end up replacing that development with something else, or you just realise that the plotline isn’t really working out that well and decide to drop it. In all cases this means that the starting bits of the plotline become redundant and don’t go anywhere. One of the major things you do while editing is to snip out bits like this. So instead of a map with one main path and lots of little offshoots that fade out into a blur, you end up with a map with fewer offshoots, but all of which are fully drawn in. It makes the book much clearer and more satisfying to read.
The result of all this is that editing, while it can be a bit frustrating from time to time, is also quite rewarding. You can very much see the book getting better as you work.
At the moment I’m averaging about one chapter a day, and IoM #4 is about twenty chapters long. So with a bit of luck I should be finished by around the middle of the month. Once that’s done, it’ll be back to work on book #5!