I think I’ll end up with about four passes, too. In this first pass, I’m treating my manuscript like someone else’s, making notes and tracking changes, going through really quickly. World-building notes are going on a piece of paper, and scene-specific notes are going in the margin of the document.

This quick one, then another to implement notes I made in the first. I think that will be the hardest and take the longest.

On another pass I’ll work on dialogue and tightening up, spell checking and all that good stuff, then I’ll send it to betas. And of course there’ll be a pass after that to implement those changes.

And I plan to do that in a month. I figure if I don’t dally on the easier stages I can devote about 20 days to the second stage, the major re-writing. That’s twice as long as authors for Eternal Press (my old editing job) were given to implement changes…but of course mine needs about 3 times the work, and that doesn’t allow for getting burned out. Or for feeling like your uterus is going to explode, which I have found today can seriously curtail your butt-in-chair time.

On schedule so far. Cross your fingers for me.

Oh, and if anyone knows Spanish, I’ve got some questions for you.