Back to the Editing Board
It is an exciting time but I’ll likely be pulling my hair out again as I wander through some of the least likable aspects of editing. I love to write and I love to create and I really enjoy myself as I bury myself in the story. But once the story is written, it must be reviewed, edited and made whole with revisions we can only hope will make it complete and that much better.
Editing is a different form of the craft and wasn’t my favorite to begin with but as I continue to write books, I’m sure it will get easier with time.
Some authors may enjoy editing as they write but I discovered what fun it is not to do so. When you’ve written a book over a period of months, you have the story in your head, you know your characters and your scenes and you feel you know the book from beginning to end. But you only know it in your head. You haven’t actually read the written version of what your imagination has produced.
While you know your story very well, you tend to forget the little things you’ve added to the story to bring warmth, humor, tension, fear or surprise. As I read through my first draft, I love it when I laugh at something I’ve written or I can’t help myself from feeling sorry for a character, worrying for them or becoming upset at something they say or do. If I’m striking a chord with myself (and I should know what’s coming), I can only believe that my story will strike a similar chord in those who read it as well.