Editing Your Book: Pushing Before The Baby Is Ready!

Big Brother has not yet come to term, but I want to start editing it NOW!

I always feel like this: I'm writing along, my characters are behaving themselves - or not, as my characters aren't angels, you see! - close to working out how my book is going to end, but I'm stuck in impatient mode. I need a bit of a nudge to help the book along. With Goalden Girl, Abbie's Rival and Epiworld I found that I could work out the ending by reading what I'd written before, and adding something or changing it. It was by no means over even then. At least ten edits and proof reads later, I was still at it. I had to get the books as perfect as I could make them.

With Big Brother I made a pre-book resolution: follow the rules. Finish the first draft first, then start to edit.

I can't remember the last time I ever stuck to a resolution!

That's the downside of editing before you finish your draft. It's not something which is advisable, but I know it's something a lot of writers can't resist doing. I take comfort in the fact that I'm not alone!

If you change this, you have to change that. You might even end up having to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. Fortunately a whole rewrite has never happened to me before, but if I start to edit Big Brother now it might happen, as I'm finding it quite a tricky story to get down. I have an idea how it's going to end in my mind, but I can't seem to get it down on paper. I have other ideas which I do jot down, but I'm impatient to see how it might affect the story.

It's like you're due to give birth and you want to push before the baby is ready! (I understand that also happens quite a lot, too!)

The only thing I can do to stop myself from editing now is to tell myself, 'NO! DON'T DO IT!'

Why don't I just obey the rules for once?

Yeah, OK, I'll think about it...