Editing – Round One (ding ding…)
I managed to get through a first draft of the book over the last couple of days, whittling it down from 380 pages to 241 (including table of content, no front or back matter). I think that was probably the easy part of the editing – the ‘no-brainer’ cutting of poems that simply didn’t make the grade according to my gut.
Now for the second run through. My gut exhausted, I am now forced to use my brain (and anyone who has read the poems I’ve written about my brains knows that, on any given day, it’s entirely likely that there are squirrels in charge up there.) So what criteria should I use? My estimable partner, Bill, suggested that the poems that garnered positive response from readers should definitely stay in, and I agree. Thank you all for that feedback!
I’m going to leave in the ones that make me cry; the ones I still have trouble reading out loud. These seem to contain a fragment of soul and so should be given precedence.
There are vers libre, haiku, form poems (a couple of forms that I’m pretty sure I invented along the way). I don’t think form should be a deciding factor.
Unfortunately, cost of printing may end up becoming a factor, as the price obviously goes up with the page count. But I’m thinking perhaps I can turn this into a positive thing, a spur to be more ruthless, to pare the content down into a lean collection that will stand on its own merit.
Round two (boxing ring bell sound fx) of editing coming up…
Hope you all are enjoying holidays – or if you don’t observe any of the many holidays that seem to collide at this time of year – hope you are simply having a lovely day!
Cheers,
Linda (the poet at the bottom of the well)
On to the Hard Copy Editing…
Well last night I finished editing on screen. There’s only so much editing you can do on a computer screen when the end product is meant to be printed on paper. At some point you have to hit the ‘print’ key and see what it looks like. Well 180 pages is still quite a bit of printing, and I formatted so the the print out would be 6×9 inch trade paperback size, so I think I’ll take it to my friendly neighbourhood print shop and get them to print it out for me. I want to see the pages actual size and order so I can see how they relate to each other. Because of the competition from e-books, I think that bound books need to be aesthetically pleasing as well as cleanly formatted and well proofed and edited. The book itself should appeal to the eye.
I guess that’s going to bring me to the next conundrum – the cover! What goes on the cover?
The title of the book is “Falling Awake”
Monday the print out, then the cover brainstorming…
Cheers,
Linda