Quote:
Originally Posted by DarkScribe
You should always go through it point by point as if you don't you will not learn anything. I doubt whether you would be likely to have any valid reason to reject edits unless you have a very incompetent editor. I have not read much of your book, little more than the sample, but I would assess you as being able to tell an interesting story, but not able to express it well in writing. You make a tremendous number of basic mistakes. For instance, you continually use that instead of who, which instead of that, clumsy sentence structure etc. You have errors in POV, words missing from sentences, basically you are a writer who can really use the services of a good editor. You should try to learn from whoever is editing your work.
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Thank you.
My editor makes a wide variety of comments. I generally accept the grammar and puncuation edits as I suck at those and know it. But I parse over his other comments and use about half of them. Story telling isn't, in my mind, so much about rules as it is in holding the reader's interest.
Writing rules are good to know, but then again rules tend to get in the way. The rules of writing are limiting. Working with arbitrary restrictions doesn't appeal to me, and writing rules are arbitrary, perhaps generally accepted but still arbitrary. Is it better to spin an interesting yarn or to get a good grade from the rules mavens? Doing both at the same time would be great, but perhaps too high a bar for me. That's ok, I can live with it.
On the other hand I have written quite a lot over the past few years for public consumption, and the feedback has been excellent. I have many fans that enjoy my writing. More by far than critics, regardless of my wandering outside the rules.
My question though, in short form is, how do you go about the editing process when the ms comes back. What is it that you do? There may only be one way, but I'm curious how others do it in case there are tips and techniques I'm not aware of.