A Shout-out!

I’ve pretty much lived and breathed edits of Defying Convention this last week. I actually woke up this morning, made my coffee, and sat down ready to start editing before I realized I’d sent them back to my editor last night. I now have the TV on catching up on the massive amount of shows I’ve missed since going into the writing cave.

I wanted to share my experience with you, especially over the last five days. You see, this is the first novel length I’ve ever edited. I have a whole new respect for authors that write larger works. I thought editing novella’s were a challenge. Boy, I’ve never been more mistaken. Don’t get me wrong, all edits are challenging, but when you are dealing with double the word count, one major revision causes a large ripple effect throughout the rest of the manuscript. That is a lot of pages to make sure now flow before you send it back to your editor. I had what I considered small change. That one small change actually connected to other paragraphs 50 pages from where it originated. It could be a phrase, passage of internals, a piece of dialogue or even one dang word. But it no longer fit. It was like an Easter egg hunt as I searched for every reference to what I just cut.

It was hard--very hard. I got to the point (I get to this point during edits every time, but it was way worse this time, lol) where every change I make is ruining the story and my editor is going to think I suck. There were points over the last few days I just wanted to rock in a corner and stare into space. I’d ruined my book, my baby, and time was running out for me to fix it.

This is where I wanted to give a huge shout-out to Christina and Tina for being there and keeping me from going over the edge. They jumped in and made me see that yes that the changes made sense and weren’t a pile of complete doo. No, I wasn’t ruining my story and I wasn’t rambling like a madman.

So I ask for all the writers out there to take a few minutes to raise a glass to critique partners. I have no idea where I’d be without mine. No, I do know—rocking in a corner.

Thanks Christina and Tina!!!
Esme
www.esmereldabishop.com