In 2020, after writing three drafts of Spacewalker, I sought the services of a professional developmental editor to help me take my manuscript to the next level. Miranda Darrow was fantastic to work with, and I came out of the process feeling like my story was stronger than ever. My structure was spot on; my plot was in great shape; my characters were sharp and well-defined. I got everything I could have hoped for out of that developmental edit!
Then in 2022, I briefly began querying agents with that manuscript. The results weren’t what I hoped for. There was a very particular warning sign that I ignored which merits discussion. During my developmental editing and pre-query sanity read-throughs, I occasionally stumbled upon sentences within my own manuscript that I didn’t like. I couldn’t consistently put into words what was wrong with these sentences, but they stood out to me on each read through. Those sentences didn’t fit, and my subconscious knew it.
That should have been a trigger to begin line editing right away. But in my enthusiasm, and possibly naivete, I ignored that sign and pushed forward. In this industry, nothing is more important than making a strong first impression, and for a short period of time, I was sending sentences out the door that I didn’t believe in. I was making bad first impressions.
So I embarked on another editorial journey, starting in August of last year. I began a self-line edit. My goal was to improve the clarity and flow of my manuscript and fix all those sentences I didn’t like.
I printed my manuscript and bought a pack of red pens. I wanted to steer away from an all-digital editing experience. Sometimes it’s important to separate the recognition of a problem from its solution. Often, when editing in a digital medium like Microsoft Word, those two activities are one in the same—upon finding a trouble spot, one immediately attempts a fix.
Instead, I discovered freedom in simply reading and flagging problems. Crossing out whole sentences and occasionally paragraphs was a wonderfully satisfying experience. It provided a little extra objectivity—the version of me tearing my manuscript to pieces had no obligation to fix the damage afterwards.
When it came time to make fixes, I encountered pages where I crossed out so much that I was better off starting from scratch. Blank pages used to intimidate me, but now I felt empowered to reexamine the essence of a scene or chapter and get back to the basics of the story.
I axed way more than I thought I would and ended up rewriting far more than I thought I would. But I found and fixed/eliminated all those suspicious sentences. It was as much as I could do on my own. Once again, I sought the services of a professional to take my story to the next level. Christine Nielson did a wonderful job line editing with me, and I am so proud of the final product. This time, my prose is sharp, word choice is compelling, and sentence-to-sentence flow is pleasing.
This was a hard lesson to learn. But, better late than never, right? This is the best Spacewalker has ever been.