I Love Editing

I should make that my bumper sticker. I know it's not a favorite pastime of a lot of writers, but it's one I personally adore because it teaches me so much.

There's editing the draft, that version your CPs carve into little pieces for you to cobble back together with spit and shoelaces. And then there's the polished draft where you wait like a death row inmate while your editor decides how much trouble you're going to be.

I won't kid you. I've been very lucky when it comes to editors. The first ones were absolute sweethearts for being so patient with me, and even more gracious when they took the time to answer my syntax questions. (I always have to understand why a sentence is parsed a certain way.) But the fun stuff is when we discuss story.

The improvements my editor asks me to make drives me giddy with expectation. Things like: Tell me what's in the room. Give me more tension here. Or my perennial favorite: Shut off the waterworks (for when the heroine brims with tears for the nth time). Oy!

Some editors can be brusque with their instructions. But I never take it personally. This is their job. They must look at hundreds of stories and they're not there to hold your hand. When my editor says add tension *here*, I snap to it like it was an imperial mandate.

I trust my editor and I trust her instincts. She makes me look better. But the icing on the cake is that every time I work with an editor I learn something new about writing a better story. I love that!

There are many things I dislike about publishing. But editing isn't one of them. It's like getting a second chance to score in the big game.

Why am I talking about editing today? Because I just finished edits for Apocalypse Rising. Huzzah! It won't be long now.

***

I'm feeling more human today. Greg came up to check on me over the weekend and I'm glad he did. Canada decided to pay us a visit and dropped an arctic blast on us. We have snow! I know--it's not a big deal to most of you, but snow is kind of a novelty down here. 

Greg blew out all the water lines (to prevent them from freezing) then went out and loaded the chicken feeder to the brim so I wouldn't have to go out there so much. He took good care of me while he was here. But now he's gone again.

I've been lax visiting some of you because of this flu, but I should be back on my game this week.

What's new? What are you writing or reading?

I started the new Tracy Anne Warren books and I'm enjoying them very much. I will definitely read more of her work.