Hi, Ms. Rose! I’m currently in the process of editing/saving money for a beta reader for my book, and I was wondering: what was your editing process like? Did you have a beta reader, and if so, how much of their advice did you take? A Sweet Sting of Salt seems so cohesive and well-written, and I really hope I can bring my book to be the same quality (also sorry if this was answered somewhere else and I didn’t realize— you don’t have to answer this, but I did want to ask)
Hi potatogirlfan (can I call you potato? hehe) Thanks so much for your kind words, and for asking me about this! I hope I can be at least a little bit helpful. As with any advice you get online from anyone, always take everything you're told with many grains of salt! For what it's worth, I don't know that you need to save money to pay a beta reader. I know there are people out there who do charge for that service, but I never have myself—my beta readers are a tight circle of trusted friends I've met and connected with over time and we all beta for each other. Some of them are folks I just want to let me know what is and is not connecting with them, and if certain things are landing, if they're following the story, and if there are place where things lag (which is what I would call a general beta read), while with others we get deeper into discussing craft and the specifics of how and why certain things are or are not working and making suggestions for ways those things might be handled differently, or even "help I've written myself into a corner, can we spitball about how to fix it" (these people I consider to be more critique partners than beta readers) As to how editing works? every book is different, and so is every editing process. For me, I do a certain amount of editing as I draft—nothing crazy, but if I notice a glaring error, or realize I want to make a change, I'll often go back and forth and do it as I'm drafting. It means I go slower than folks who draft the whole thing first without ever looking back, but works best for me. with Salty I made my own edit notes and enlisted beta readers at this point. After that I did a big developmental revision. After that, I ended up finding a mentor through a sadly-now-defunct program, who did a deep read of that version and I did further revising based on their notes. When I felt there was truly nothing else I'd do with the manuscript on my own, I did a polishing pass (think proofreading, to make it all as clean and shiny as possible on a line level) and began querying. I had to write and edit a query letter and detailed synopsis ahead of starting that process—you can find good examples of both online from people who are probably much better qualified than me to explain them 😂
Once I found an agent, I did another round of revisions based on her notes, and then we went on submission to publishing houses. After Salty was acquired, then was a further developmental revision with my editor there, followed by copy edits (line level, detailed, no longer addressing big picture), a final proof read, and pass pages, which is your last chance to catch weird typos and such before they lock the whole thing and print it! I'm not sure if this novel answers anything for you or not, but at the very least, it's a look into how MUCH revision goes into a novel. My biggest advice is the write what you love from the start, because you're going to be reading and revising it A LOT!
Wishing you all the very best with your own writing❤️
