The first round of edits are back with our editor. Like most writers, there were periods of panic and calm.
Here’s a mini diary of the last month of writing.
Before the edits arrive
We’re seesawing between
- We hope she sends them soon, otherwise we won’t have time to do them
- We hope she doesn’t send them yet, the next book’s going well, we’re on a roll and don’t want to be interrupted.
When the edits arrive
As the days go by
- There are so many changes, we’ll never get through them in the time
- It’s not so bad, we can do it
- We’ll race through the inline edits in a week, which will give us plenty of time for the big picture stuff (do other writers do the big-picture stuff first?)
- Argh. Three weeks in and we’re only three quarters of the way through the inline edits. We’ll never make it
- That wasn’t so bad. Last chapter. Now to go back and see if we’ve covered everything off
- Nearly deadline, and all those yellow highlighted ‘to-do’s’ still to do
- I know, I know. We need to fix this but the editor hasn’t marked it, so do we have to?
- I can’t read this book any more. I am so over it
- You know, this book is much better than it was
- One last read-through
- I’m not going to look any more. If we find another typo I’ll scream.
At last, it’s away
- It’s done. That was hard work
- We really should go back to the next book
- Yes, but let’s go out and celebrate first.
- We go out to dinner and hardly talk all night, we’re so drained.
A few days later
One of us picks opens the story and flicks through it
- We didn’t fix the issue on page 47
- We’ll do in the next round of edits. Meantime, we’ve got a massive plot hole here in book two. How do we fix that?