Boring title, but who cares. The manuscript is done, the whole flipping thing, and that’s three books in eight years, and a whole weight off my back.
I’m writing this during the first morning of edits (I spent yesterday evening doing the same, but today feels more official), and have already taken two weeks off. Holiday in Paris, which I could have extended, but I had a horrifying urge to get back home and get started on this new part of making sure the book is ready.
It’s been really interesting to look back on how certain people talked about this book while I was writing it, that for eight years, it looked (to them) like I was doing nothing and was ‘unable to finish even a mid-sized project’. Technically it’s not their fault for thinking like that, having no curiosity in how this thing was actually completed, but I’ve never been the kind of person to only believe something when I see it, or to only see the value in something if I can physically fucking point to it. So I’m sneakily glad to have the last laugh on that one.
I don’t really care about stuff like this, and it doesn’t drive me to get back at them, but it’s still nice to have a little quiet win that I don’t need to address – watch how they never bring that argument up again, even though they’ve been stuck on it for multiple years!
Anyway, editing at this stage is pretty freeing, and I quite like bringing the hyper-critical examiner out to the front: she says all the bitchy things, so I don’t have to. It’s just a read-through at this point, and if something does jump out at me, I don’t fix it or try to think of a better word in that moment (will leave that for another stage), but I do write ‘expand’ or ‘rephrase’, or my favourite, ‘CLUMSY’.
If bits of dialogue or phrasings do jump out at me, I’m not going to suppress that urge, I’ve just been scrawling them into the margins or above that line. Again, my reasoning is that I’ll have to deal with that issue eventually, and if I get a brainwave on the first read-through, why not make use of it?
So it might take a little longer doing this first read than most people, but as you can see from how long it’s already taken me, I’m very happy with that. What’s another week, if I can get it right?