I Survived the Edits (aka Quit Being a Pansy)

Well, as it turns out, I was freaking out for nothing. My first round edits? I made it out unscathed! My editor was lovely and gave positive, constructive feedback on how I could build my MS to be the strongest piece it could be.

See? Awesome.

I flew through the edits, getting them all done and managing to stay ahead of schedule by almost a full week (I’m not ashamed to say I strutted my way around my bedroom several times). The majority of the edits were small things–a word used too many times, or close repetitions of sentence structure. The most difficult part of the entire process, though, was tweaking small details that carried through the entire piece.

When you write something for the first time, the story unfolds and evolves along with you. You watch the characters grow as you document their story. When something isn’t quite right, or doesn’t quite work and the need to alter comes into play, adjusting things so slightly that everything still flows beautifully is much more difficult than I would’ve thought. The smallest detail change in chapter 1 can affect a major outcome in chapter 13. Which was why I read through this sucker four times just in case.

I went through and tweaked and altered and changed and nitpicked until I remembered that I’d have to do this all over again after line edits.

The good news? The goal is to have the final piece to the copy editors by the end of August (!!!). And after that…more waiting.

But then comes the fun things like…spilling the beans, for one thing. And cover art. And promotions. And teasing snippets. Can I say how excited I am for all of that? Cause I am. Ridiculously so.

Next post? Hopefully some of those beans I need to spill…