Round One

After a massive session lasting a full eight hours, I’ve completed the review of the first round of edits on Limbus. Despite the agony of it all, I must say I’m pleased. Through the pain, I feel the story is more streamlined, the necessary points are made, and the characters remain true to who they are. In all, it was a huge cut as the original 99,500 word story was cut by a full 7,000 words. For me, that’s nearly a full day of writing, but I can live with it especially since it was fluff. That’s not to say I wrote all that to increase its length, but rather to add depth, though it was depth I didn’t need. Most of all, however, was the fact I once again learned a lot. Unlike Jeremiah Stone, I'll not immediately send these edits back to my publisher. 

During the process of Jeremiah Stone, I was under a crunch for time. Because of that, I skipped through the edits quickly, perused the final copy, and marked it good without a thorough reading. I also didn’t use my most current version of software to edit the story with and thus later found hundreds of grammatical errors both me and the publisher should’ve caught. I have vowed this time will be different.

This time I'll create a hard copy of the book and go through all of it with a highlighter because I find it’s easier to see mistakes on the printed page then in its digital form. Maybe it’s because I’m old and used to reading and flipping real pages. Maybe it’s because my eyes are trained for it. Either way, I’ll be making my way to the local print shop and spend the thirty bucks to put my work in print. Then I’ll read every word again with the intent of making sure the story flows well, that nothing completely necessary is left out or the reverse, and give it my final okay. I'll do all of this prior to sending it back knowing another round of editing is in order.

Then, and only then, will I take what I’ve learned and apply it to the other stories I’ve written. I, however, will not work on Azazel. That book has made it to the publisher and may be in the middle of the editing process already which means any changes I make in Azazel will not matter to them. It’s obvious I have my work (and a lot of it at that) cut out for me, but despite my loathing of editing I know it only makes my writing a better product. And though I know I should be happy to even be published, I want my stories to be something I can be proud of. After these edit, I truly feel that way.