I wa just wondering, because my target is around 130000 words and I am guessing it will take around 4 months to get cleaned up, after finished, how long does yours take roughly?
Mine has so far taken six weeks to do several edits, I'm now half way through a final edit on the 140,000 words. Should be (hopefully) finished in the next few weeks.
I have taken months and months to edit something though. It depends how many edits you do and how thoroughly you do it and how much time each time you're spending on it. I'd have probably got my editing done quicker but I keep lapsing and spending all day doing nothing... Bad me.
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. ~Flannery O'Connor
It depends on how you edit. If you're doing grammar and line edits then that would take much time because all you're doing is reading. Plot, character, etc editing would take a long, long time because you would have to move things around, rewrite whole passages, and what not. I haven't gotten to editing any of my novels yet--at least not the finished one.
Also I'm moving this to writing tips. ^_^
“It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.” ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
I've been editing for quite some time, but that is because I am doing major rewriting. I discovered an entirely different avenue for my story to go and I am in the midst of completely revamping all of the old work.
However, I agree that to simply do clean up and so on and so forth won't take too long. I would be cautious in setting a definite time-limit for yourself, however. Who knows, you might decide that you don't like the way some of it is written, rewrite it and then find out that you could totally make this scene longer... etc. etc. etc. and you have a ten book series laid out before you. *cough* Or, you can just read through with a red pencil with a print out (I prefer doing that sort of thing with a hard copy - it's easier to read than a computer screen when you are trying to do grammar editing and the like) and just mark all of the spots where you missed a period, misspelled something or whatnot.
Editing is usually 2-3x the length of the writing for me. So if I wrote a 50k word story in a month, it would take me three months to edit it. Even though I am usually pretty good on the first run through, I like to wait a couple of months before I edit, and then when I do edit, I take it very slowly and comb through it several times.
To my opinion, your editing should take about 3/4 of the time it took for you to write your novel? That's a pretty interesting estimate.
You should put as much effort into editing as you did writing, really.
"Video games don't affect kids. If Pacman had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills, and listening to repetitive electronic music." --anonymous/banner.
My editing takes forever. I'll push out my writing, then rewrite whole passages, which can take anywhere from twice the time it took to write to five times the time, sometimes even longer. O.o Then I go through for spelling/grammar, but I usually catch that while writing, even though I probably shouldn't...I think I need to start turning off my automatic spellcheck.
I write well enough (when my mind's in it) that I don't make many major flaws. A lot of stuff will be picked up on as I write it.
As far as story goes, I usually don't progress into the story unless I'm completely satisfied with the chapter/group of chapters/section of a particular chapter that I'm working on.
Although I might skip a chapter after a certain point, because that particular scene may contain powerful emotions or plot advancement that I want to perfect. (See my Tyrant Ch 2, Tanari'k's section: you'll see what I mean (and puke)).
As far as grammar and errors like that is concerned, it only took me a week to fully go through all 369 pages of my book and fix them. As for a full any changes in the story? Well, I don't know. I don't think much would need to be changed...and I'm not trying to be arrogant when I say that. I honestly think I did that good of a job on it.
I'm advertising here: Rosetta...A Determinism of Morality...out May 25th...2010 album of the year, without question.
I'm excited. I just wrote something for school (roughly 4,000 words,) and it doesn't look like it will take too long to edit. I did the tense corrections (it's present, and I kept switching to past,) grammar, and spelling in about fifteen minutes, but as I reread it, my first draft is pretty good.
I love that! I'll end up with the same product, but before this would be my tenth draft, not my first! I just chopped about a month off my editing time!
Bad me. 
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