On Writing and Publishing: Plotting vs. Writing vs. Revising vs. Editing

I’ve been thinking about the writing process lately. Especially now that I think I’m more experienced at this whole self-publishing thing.

I just finished the first draft of one of my books and I’m starting the tedious job of revising the manuscript. So, I got to thinking about the stages of writing and how much I enjoy (or dislike) each of them. Not only that, I’m wondering if all writers feel the same about each stage as I do or not.

As a kindergarten teacher (yep, I teach kindergarten), I tell my students five stages of writing:

1. Planning
2. Drafting
3. Revising
4. Editing
5. Publishing

I personally enjoy the draft stage the most, but you can’t get to the publishing part without going through all five, can you? At least, I can. Even if I tried to bypass one of them, it would be impossible for me.

So, let’s talk about this.

PLANNING

I know there are plotters and pansters. I am definitely a plotter, although I wasn’t always.

Twenty years ago, when I started writing I just did it for me, and I just went with the flow. There wasn’t a lot of planning involved, I was a panster.

Now that I am publishing what I write, I think I became a plotter out of necessity. I need to make sure it all flows and that I stay with a timeline that makes sense because strangers are going to read what I write and I don’t want them to be disappointed. They could be my fans one day, after all. I now create a skelleton of what my story is going to be and it takes me hours (distributed in a few days) to plot. I am definitely now a plotter.

Do I enjoy plotting?

I do, a little bit. For weeks before writing the story, I go over events in my head. I think and I think and I think. At the same time I’m usually writing another story, but in my spare time I’d be mulling over what’s going to happen in the next book.

Once I get it on paper, it all becomes more real. I also have to think the most when I plot. I have to take A LOT of things into consideration, which is why it takes so long. I create or update character sheets and places and I look into my timeline in excel many, many times. It’s exhausting but very important.

DRAFTING

Drafting has to be, hands down, my favorite part of writing. Drafting is when I write the story. It’s when I bring my characters to life and I write descriptions and dialogue and the movie that was once in my head is now on paper for other people to “watch”. It’s amazing and I just love doing it. This is why I became a writer. I consider myself a quick typist, which means I can almost think at the same time I write and that helps me with the pacing. I don’t worry too much about typos or grammatical mistakes like I did back when I wrote only for me, because I know I will get to that exhaustive revising and editing part and then… I will pay a stranger to edit it, too.

The first draft usually takes me between two or three months to write, depending on the time in the school year I’m doing it. During the summer I go faster, and during August and September, I am really slow because it’s the beginning of a new year.

I also send the first draft to my brother to read. He knows it’ll have a LOT of mistakes, but he’s the first person to find inconsistencies, which I can address during the revising process.

REVISING


Revising is the most tedious part of writing for me.

I’d rather not do it, but at the same time, I wouldn’t pay anyone else to do it for me.

Because I write the first draft so fast, I usually don’t explain things so well or I don’t describe as well as I should. I revise using a paid software (ProWriting Aid) and I read my draft sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph.

The only easy part is that it’s already written, so I don’t have to create anything new, I just have to refine it and make it sound easy to read ad understand to an outside reader. It is a necessary step, but it is my least favorite. I do revise faster than I write because I don’t have to generate all those words from scratch, but it still takes me about six weeks to two months.

I have a friend who reads the revised version. She also gives me a few comments, although she isn’t as thorough as my brother.

EDITING


While the editing stage is easy, it is not my favorite.

I do proofread a bit when I revise, but once I’m done, I always start from the beginning and I read it all out loud. I read very slowly and I read paying attention. If I find I started reading in automatic, I go back. I also try to do the inflection in the character dialogues because it’s important that it feels natural.

Once I’m done reading each scene (and finding spelling/grammar mistakes along the way) I run each through the free version of Grammarly. Grammarly helps me identify a few other typos I might have missed. Of course, this doesn’t mean my manuscript is perfect, but since it takes me about two or three weeks to read it all, I don’t do another editing run… it is time for an editor.

My editor is a bit slow. She takes about 3 to 6 weeks to copyedit and proofread my manuscript (my average length is 70,000 words). She gives me back the file as a google doc with her comments to one side. I review her suggestions and make changes in my manuscript and then send it back to her. She re-reads it and sends it to me again. She always finds more things in the second read-through and I’m glad.

Once my manuscript is edited, I send out the ARC copies and I am ready for the last stage: Publishing.

PUBLISHING


I am Amazon exclusive, and all my books (except for the reader magnet) are in Kindle Unlimited.

I wouldn’t consider the publishing part as fun, but it’s not tedious or boring either.

Publishing means looking for cover ideas, choosing an image, and paying a cover designer to create the cover.

Publishing means writing a blurb for the book and then paying someone to rewrite it to make it sound better.

Publishing means to compile my file on Scrivener (the writing software I use) as a .mobi for Amazon and a PDF for the print version of the book.

And then, publishing means to upload the ebook into amazon and the print book.

All of this takes time. But, it’s the final process and at the end comes the reward.

How is it for you? Is it similar to what I go through or do you have a completely different process or feel about the process? I’d love to hear.

In the meantime, I invite you to visit my webpage and take a look at my books: claudia-silva.com.

Cheers!