Editing, Editing, Editing

I'm doing line edits right now for UNLUCKY, and I'm really learning a lot from the process. For RUMBLE, my editor line edited herself and I never really say what she was doing unless I compared the old to the new, literally word by word and comma by comma. For this one, she's using the Track Changes feature in Word and I can see every space, comma, word that has been changed/deleted. In some cases, she's also put in a description of why she's making the change.

It's a great experience because I'm learning so much about how the editors cut/change in books to make them ready for production. At first, I opened the file and almost fell out of my chair - what in God's name is all that red, I thought. Most of it has been no big deal as far as editing goes. But the overall change to the novel is going to be grand. It's simply amazing how a word or two can change the punch to a paragraph/scene.

I've taken the liberty of forwarding the first couple of chapters to my cp's so that they can hopefully learn what my editor is looking for and in that way better assist me in getting the product closer to perfect before she sees it.

By the time I'm done with these edits, galleys, etc., I'm guessing I will have read this manuscript 30-40 times. As of today, I still haven't read RUMBLE in published format. I've found that most writer's don't read their books after publication. Probably because we're so tired of them after analyzing every thought/emotion/body part/description/word, etc. after all those months that we don't want to do it again. And there's the other side too - no matter how much you work on your novel, you will always read it and want to change something. So best not to read something that is no longer changeable.

So just to let you faithful readers out there know - there IS a next book and it is close to production time and I promise you'll be reading something again from me. :)