Seeing Red

Editing.

Last week I got my first chapter edits back from the editor for my book.  It looked, at first, that after a brief glance that the biggest change to the chapter was that now most of the font was red.  YIKES!  I was, of course, terrified that the final product would end up not really my book at all if I accepted all of the changes it looked like they wanted to make.  So I did the thing any mature, reasonable adult would do.  I closed the document and refused to look at it for a while. 

When I could not ignore it anymore, I opened it up again and actually looked at the proposed edits.  All the red was misleading because in Microsoft Word - track changes feature - your deletes, insertions and any rearranging of sentences shows both the before and after in red links.  So there was double the red.  Phew.  Sigh of relief.  Then looking through them, I found that most of the edits were not taking away from my voice or the overall feeling I wanted the chapter to portray.  After looking over the document and accepting some changes, and rejecting others...

Taa Daa!  The chapter looks fantastic and after several back and forth versions with my editor - it looks like a real author wrote it.  A real author instead of a Darcy obsessed adult female awake early one Saturday morning after dreaming of the scene in the first chapter.  (Ok, I admit it.  I dream about Darcy and Elizabeth.)  I cannot wait for the rest of the book to be finished - to see the final product.  My editor is fantastic and Meryton Press is a great publisher to work with. 

I am kind excited.  I mean when it is finished and published - I will have written a real book.  I know I wrote it before and nothing changes with publication but the published version will actually merit the paper it is on in my opinion.  WOO.  HOO.