Editing a book or Should I say re-writing a book

Doesn’t matter how cool is to finish the manuscript, doesn’t matter how great it feels that the artist sent you the cover of the book (this week I received the cover art of my next novel, ‘The Writer’, that will be published in the end of May, and trust me, it feels cool) I finish the second draft of the next book, the next novel, but as people know writing is not a one time deal, in order to really write, you need to re-write, and when you are done, you need to re-write again. In the perfect world (the ones writes would love to create) you finish writing, type: THE END and the mistakes, inconsistencies and more that you create in the first draft, will correct themselves.
So you finish the story, the novel is done. The problem now, (and the cool thing) is that you know where the story goes, I work based on a light outline, and let the story change, evolve, and go places. For example in this novel (the one I am editing right now) there was a character that in the outline was going to die in the last chapter, and instead was killed four chapter earlier. Why? Because that’s how the story roll, because that was the right moment, because there were things in the story that I didn’t see until he was ready to died.
Editing the book feel more like re-writing than actually a fun activity, writing the book is a blast, there is full of opportunities, you can go right or left, make the character jump, cry, be sad or happy, editing instead, is about not telling more about the story and begin showing the real color of the story, is hard (at least for me) and it is not always the most fun of the jobs.
Editing the book is sitting with Steven Pressfield Resistance, in the same table to read the manuscript, and it’s that Resistance the one holding the red pen. Your job is to notice the changes, and made them, the Resistance job is to tell you how bad your book is, and how bad of writer you are. In a way the Resistance is correct, a first draft is bad, (even the second one) is full of little inconsistencies, little details, is telling about emotions instead of showing them, is telling about the character instead of letting the reader see the character, is telling a story that is full of holes.
The first, second and usually third draft are simply rocks, if you show it to most people they will only see a rock, a simple worthless rock, the Resistance knows this, and work incredible hard into force you to see that it is a worthless rock, your job now, as a writer is simple, show to the Resistance the Diamond inside. Your job is to Write, re-write, write again, re-write again and remove from the rock all that it’s not part of that diamond, eventually the Resistance, stop fighting and wait until you begin writing the next book, and it’s that moment when she quits, that the process is fun again.

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Augusto Pinaud

Augusto Pinaud es Coach de Tecnología de Productividad Bilingüe, Especialista en Nozbe Teams. Augusto trabaja con dueños y gerentes de pequeñas empresas, ejecutivos y profesionales en productividad, tecnología y mejora de procesos utilizando una variedad de tecnologías de productividad.

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