The time has come for the first official round of implementing edits for my next intended release, On the Flip Side! While I do not yet have a publication date in mind, I enjoyed reading the first draft for the second time throughout June and July and am currently working through the editing notes I made during this read-through. Here’s where I’m at with the book so far!

If you would like to recap on the previous Editing Diaries entry for On the Flip Side, you can read it here:

• Editing Diaries: On the Flip Side (Episode 1)

June – July 2025: The Second Read-Through and First Round of Edits

My intention with this first official round of edits was to be as brutal as possible in picking out issues, and by all the things I highlighted to change on my eBook version of the manuscript, I smashed that goal. XD

While I haven’t discovered any major issues or plot holes in the book yet, I noted that one or two scenes needed to be overhauled. The first is one that I struggled to write while penning the first draft, and I think I’ve found a solution for its issues. I’ve already implemented edits for it and like how it turned out (for now, at least :P). There are also a couple pacing issues with the B-story and the character who is involved in it that made me realize I need to add a scene or two, or at least a few paragraphs for clarity, earlier in the book.

Other than that, most of the edits I’ve caught have been minor. I ended up changing Katie’s cat’s name to something else because the original name was too similar to Aiden and Brandon’s dog in Speak Your Mind and its unpublished spin-off, Tales of an Awkward Turtle. There’s also an issue throughout the book where some of the quotation marks aren’t curved like the other ones, so that’s been a pain to fix. I’ll need to go into Atticus once I’m finished with this round and format the text messages with the cool new text message bubbles they’ve added so they’ll look like they’re supposed to for the next read-through. As far as the actual writing quality goes, I slashed out any crutch words and unnecessary adverbs I noticed, and have corrected passive voice. My hope is that since I’ve been so brutal during this round, I won’t have as many unnecessary words to edit out during the dreaded Word Search Edit, where I go through a comprehensive list of crutch words during the final stages of editing.

As of the 30th of July, I’ve only managed to sit down for one editing session since finishing the second read-through and have implemented edits for the first 22%. If I have time this week, I’m going to try to get more done and hopefully reach the 50% mark. If not, it’s okay. Since I got burnt out on editing last year in preparation for The Dream‘s release, I want to take things slow and give myself grace. Being able to write, edit, and publish books is a fun privilege, and I don’t want to lose sight of that or allow it to become a chore for the sake of releasing books faster.

Talk to Me, Arrowheads!

If you’re interested in On the Flip Side or want to learn more about it, please check out this post and/or add it to your to-read list on Goodreads!

If you’re a fellow writer, what is your favorite aspect of editing?

Aim high, stay strong, and always hit your mark.

-Allyson 😀