I go through a lot of stages for editing. Right now I’m working on three stories. Bah Humbug – a short story for a Christmas anthology, Sacrificed to the Sea Monster – an Ava novel, and Alien Mate book 1 (bad WIP name).
Last night I finished the paper edit – meaning I actually print out the story and edit it on paper. I know I should try not to use paper but I never feel the story is done until I do this stage. Bah Humbug didn’t take a lot of time but it needed some updates. Sacrificed took two nights.
My sister has those two. She takes my edits and puts them on the computer. She also pulls out any quotes I want – when I remember to watch for quotes.
Tonight I did a bunch of stuff like get through my emails, schedule posts for a release party, obsess about what place my books was at, begging people to buy my book in the hopes of driving up the standing, and you know stuff.
When I was done with the stuff, I tried to decide if I was awake enough to pay attention to client work or if I should write or edit or what? I opened Alien Mate. Now what I’m about to say sounds like I don’t like my writing but there’s always a point where I don’t think my work is good enough. It happens with every book. It comes and it goes. I publish and people tell me one way or the other.
I opened Alien Mate and started editing. I thought – at the beginning – I’m not sure I can stick doing this. Then it went from 10ish to midnight. I looked up at noted the time. It was like – wait what?
I’ve gotten five chapters gone through. I’ve had some biggish changes and noted a few inconsistencies. It’s almost 12:30 and I have to be up at 6:00 am so it will be a short night. But the reality is, I want to keep reading and editing. I know what’s coming up and I cannot wait to read it.
However, the day job is needed and I like my pay check. So I’m off to bed and tomorrow night I’ll work on this some more.