Random Thoughts on Editing

 This blog will be shorter than usual because I’m working through the second set of edits from my publisher and I’m staring at a looming deadline. 

My first editor, Annette, described the editing process as a tennis game.  The way we worked was I’d send her the first hundred pages of a manuscript and she’d let me know if I was on the right track.  Then, when the manuscript was finished, I’d send it to her, she’d edit it and email it back to me.

What she would send back would be my original work marked up and obviously scanned.  I’d than get that printed and work from a hard copy.  Old school.

Now, both my editor and copy editor, work on an electronic version, email it to me and I take it from there.  New school.

I’m no longer working on a hard copy, so the good news is that a tree will live to see another day.  Bad news, I’m a knuckle dragger and not technologically inclined.  There are a lot of marks and lines and colors in the text and in the margin.

Which I find a little distracting. 

But Diane and Beth are both talented and excellent to work with, and frankly they end up helping me make my manuscript a much stronger book. 

So, this is the final set of edits I’m looking at.  And probably the twentieth time I’ve read through my book, tentatively titled WHISPER ROOM and scheduled to be released in 2022. 

Someday I’m going to count how many times I actually read my own work before it’s launched. 

Completely off topic, SHADOW HILL was released two weeks ago and I’m blessed that I’ve gotten great reviews.  One was from a writer I hold in extremely high regard.  Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Mystery and Suspense Magazine have all been exceedingly kind. 

But a review I received that surprised me was from the lady who cuts my hair.  I was there a couple of days ago and she had just finished my first two books, which she asked me to sign.  She said, “I’ve known you for years now and just got around to reading your series.  I love them and so does my father.”

She told me that even though she’s dyslexic, she read the first book in two days.

Of course, I always take that as a compliment.  But, hey, it takes me a whole year to write a novel.  It’s like Thanksgiving dinner.  It takes days to plan and cook and then just like that, the meal is over. 

Then Carley told me that the other ladies who work there were in the middle of reading my first book and loving it.

While Carley cut my hair, we all had a pleasant discussion about what a hot mess my protagonist, Geneva Chase, is.  

Then I gladly signed their books and thanked them for their kind words. 

So now it’s time to look over the last of the final edits.  

Stay safe!