After much pacing around in circles and chewing my fingernails, last week I received word from Excellent Editor regarding Book 2 (still working on a title). The pacing and chewing is because I am incredibly impatient and had been hoping to hear from Excellent Editor since the day after I turned in the first draft. Because I am her only client and she would of course drop everything to read my book, right? Right?
What do you mean, no?
Anyway. The email was full of conditional praise. The book was a hit! The characters were good–except for where they need to be worked on. The plot was fun and smooth–except for a couple areas that were a bit confusing. The silliness was at just the right level–except for some places where it didn’t seem to fit and others where it didn’t really work. And so on, and so on.
So I quickly downloaded the attached draft with Excellent Editor’s notes and edits and comments. Then I went through the entire book simply “accepting” any typo correction or grammar fix or capitalization change. I mean she’s an Excellent Editor, so if she says I spelled the word wrong or put a comma in the wrong place, who am I to argue?
That left me with the comments. Places in the body of the text where she’d made a note such as “this isn’t working” or “I don’t understand how this could happen” or “I don’t think the character would really say this” or “this is too wordy for middle grade” or just “dear God this is awful!” You know, places where I’d have to actually think and work.
Before starting off on draft 2, I went and counted up the comments. You’ll never guess how many there were (unless you looked at the title of this post).
95.
95 things for me to fix on a document that–according to Mircosoft Word–is 210 pages. That’s, like, almost one every other page. As I scrolled through the document counting the notes, and my count rose higher and higher, my ego deflated more and more. She hated it. She hated everything about it. Every single thing. Well OK, not every single thing. But 95 of them.
I went and sulked, spent time with the cats so I’d feel loved, told myself I was still a good writer, told myself to shut up because no I wasn’t, and scolded myself for being such a goober. I had to look at the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is, she likes Book 2 enough to care. Enough to pay attention to detail and nit pick every little flaw.
So I took a deep breath and dove in, starting with Note #1. I need to see the forest for the trees. If I worry about all the comments one at a time instead of all 95 at once, it makes it more manageable while also stretching out the agony.
A Win-Win!
The official website of author and storyteller David Neilsen! 