Over the weekend I was editing.
First, I finished going through the hard copy of the ‘Bonds’ manuscript complete with yellow highlighter and one of my ‘acquired’ Huntington pens. 291 pages, 94,000 words all hole-punched and in a big black binder. Punctuation and typo errors marked in luminous lemon, and black ink streaks cutting through various lines of description and dialogue. The margins were filled with detail and suggestions to be added later in the rewrite. That task was finished on Saturday after about a week of sitting in cafes and at my cluttered desk at home.

Sunday arrived and it was time to start to input all the corrections, deductions, and additions into the electronic version of the manuscript. Ten hours later I was a third of the way through. Who says Sunday is the day of rest? Tonight and every night this week will be more of the same.

Editing is a thankless task. I know some more affluent writers out there have the ability to hire an editor but, I’m a tight Scotsman who wants to control what’s on the page. I’m also tight because I’m too poor to pay for an editor. Perhaps in the future I’ll employ the services of a professional editor but, I’m also the sort of person that will still do what I do prior to them getting their hands on my work.

So, the edit should be finished this week, my Alpha Readers should get their versions of the book next week, and then it’ll be a final push towards publication sometime in April. All of which will include the creation of a cover. I know what I want for that; it just may take some doing to pull it off.

Writing is hard work, sometimes with longer shifts than the actual day job that currently pays the bills and keeps the electricity flowing into the wordprocesser. I wouldn’t, and won’t, give it up though. Here’s to many more ten hour weekend shifts armed with a highighter.