The archeology of editing

This week I've finished editing the sixteen chapters of my novel Jade which I needed for the Conville and Walsh Word of Mouth competition.  That text has been polished, read out loud, and submitted to the competition.  I made substantial changes to the story in my last re-write, and my previous synopsis was no longer accurate, so I've had to re-write that too.

It struck me as I was working on the text that I could chart my development as a writer by the stages of editing my work has passed through.  When I look back at texts of my early works (what few survive), I see that I had good ideas, but I didn't translate those ideas into readable stories. The biggest change in my develooment as a writer has been learning to really edit my work. In depth.  I'd say that's where most of my new learning has come from during the last five years.

When I look back at the changes I've made to manuscripts I feel like an archaeologist unearthing different styles of editing.  I wrote Snowbird around twenty years ago, and the original was full of my heroine Jian's internal dialogue, all rendered in italics.  There was pages of it, all slowing down the action,  

I also at that time had a liking for very long sentences, punctuated with numerous semi-colons.  Over the years the internal dialogue got pruned, and the sentences became shorter.  Commas replaced the semi-colons.  Then I decided to edit the novel to make it sound punchier.  The results were not good.  My short, sharp sentences were sometimes so bad that they stripped all meaning out of the text.  I had removed all flow from it, and it was difficult to read.  I also did minimal scene-setting at this time.  I knew where my characters were, but unfortunately I didn't tell the reader what was I my head.  

Today i think I've finally found my style and voice.  My sentences have lengthened, and my work has regained its readability and flow.  I've learned how to craft cliffhangers, and how to structure my stories to keep the tension rising.   And I've found my storytelling niches too, focussing on ecology and wildlife, art, and aspects of AI sentience.

I'm happy with where I am as a writer finally, and it's taken me a long time to reach this place.  But who knows how I'll feel about today's work when I unearth it again in another ten years' time.