How I Broke the Toxic Editing Cycle by Putting Book One in a Time-Out
Recently I finished the developmental edit of book number two in my series. I’ve set it aside for now, and pulled book number one out of the virtual drawer.
I was actually excited to be looking at it again. When I put it away last year, I’d had my head so deeply into it for so long that I just couldn’t see it any more. Well, I could see it enough to know I was sick of it, but that was it.
I wasn’t sure, when I pulled it out, how I’d respond to reading it again. Would it be (in tones of deep discouragement), OMG, I can’t believe I wrote that? Or, in tones of squealing excitement, OMG, I can’t believe I wrote that!!!!!
So far, it’s neither one of those extremes.
I downloaded the manuscript as a PDF, and sat down to read it on my tablet. That’s where I read most books these days, and I wanted to try to read it with the eyes of a reader, rather than the eyes of a writer. Of course, I stopped and made lots of notes, but they were notes about things that struck me as a reader.
Now I’m editing my way through them. I’m hoping that, by the time I’m done with this round of edits, I’ll be ready to hand it off to some beta readers. If you’d like to be one of them, keep an eye out for an announcement in a few weeks.
What I’m Reading
The Whitechapel Widow by Emily Organ
This is the first in a new series of historical mysteries by Emily Organ, but reintroduces characters we’ve met before in the Penny Green series, including Penny herself.
Emma Langley is about to embark on a new phase of life with her husband, moving from London to Suffolk. Then he disappears. Frantically, Emma searches for him while the police refuse to take her concern seriously.
She remembers newspaper reporter Penny Green (now Mrs. James Blakely), who helped solve the case when Emma’s brother was killed four years previously, and asks for her help. Together, they untangle the web surrounding William Langley, as well as another mystery that’s been terrifying London for months.
Murder Takes the Stage by Colleen Cambridge
Phyllida has left Mallowan Hall temporarily, to manage things for the family in London, where her employer Agatha Christie is working on a stage play. But then actors start dying in theaters, and the community of actors, producers, and directors is thrown into turmoil.
Can Phyllida stop the killings before there’s a fourth victim?
This is the fourth in the series starring Phyllida Bright, housekeeper to Agatha Christie.
Notable Quotes
It is quite a normal response, so psychology tells us, and I am a firm believer in psychology when it agrees with my own opinions.
- Lord of the Silent by Elizabeth Peters
One of my favorite quotes from the delightful, and not at all opinionated, Amelia Peabody, who may just be my favorite fictional heroine of all time.
‘Do you miss it?’
‘Stand-up?’ He screwed his lips into a little purse of disagreement. ‘Nah. No different here. As a pub landlord, I still get heckled and shouted at and have glasses thrown at me by a bunch of drunkards.’
- The Body on the Beach by Simon Brett
I love this quote. It reminds me of a time, back in my days of playing guitar and singing in clubs and bars in Vermont and New York. I’d taken a new bar gig, about an hour and a half away from where I lived. It was an uneventful evening, with what I thought were pretty normal responses from the crowd. Some paid attention, some didn’t, but enough people clapped after each song to make me feel like I was doing a good job.
At the end of the evening, I went up to the bartender to collect my pay.
“You did really well,” he said. “The last guy we had in here, they threw beer bottles at him.”
Gulp! Glad I didn’t know that ahead of time!
“How in the world you can drink an iced coffee in this weather is beyond me,” she said. “It’s so cold out there I saw a politician putting his hands in his own pockets.”
- The Write to Remain Silent by Jasmine Webb
Love the snark!
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Wise Words
Are you ready to dust off your linguistic thinking caps? Because it’s time to choose another wise word. . . Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to select the better word to fill in the blank below. Your choices are seated or seeded. Answers will be posted next week.
But, just because I had deep-_____ worries about what it meant did not mean that I was in a position to say no. My worries came to fruition. You won’t hear me say, ‘I told you so,’ though.”
- Networking Nightmare by Craig W Turner