Okay, so I got the novel back a few weeks ago, sat on it for a few days while working on other stuff, then I read whole the whole book again. It’s a bad idea to jump straight into an edit without re-reading the book along with the comments and suggestions attached to it. You might write in an idea then find a note later on that conflicts with something you’ve changed and so blows your whole plotline apart. No, you have to read the whole book again . . . sorry. :-/
A few more days to digest, make notes, think things through. Remember there’s no rush; the book will be finished when it’s finished.
The next thing I do is something I call the ‘duh-edit’. This involves going through the book, ironing out the elements that just shouldn’t be there, whether the editor spotted them or not. There’s the regular stuff such as excessive use of adjectives (actually, much of this should be taken out before the editor sees it – you don’t want to embarrass yourself), and the not so common stuff which you will only know when you read it:
- People milling about for no apparent reason.
- Excessive head-turning (I’m a bugger for that.)
- Sighing.
- And my personal favourite: people blinking and saying, ‘What?’
All this is sort of like a ‘pre-edit’ before the fun and hard work begins.