Edits! I got my edits back from my amazing editor Natasha Bardon at Harper Voyager. She sent me a scary five-page letter which pointed out lots of things and asked lots of questions I didn’t have answers to, and recommended lots of changes that made me say, “erm, but”.
Then we had a brilliant conversation about the letter, and everything stopped being scary and became merely daunting.
Since then, well, since then I’ve been immersed back in the world and timeline of Godblind, making those edits and structural changes, inventing new characters in order to kill them, cutting other characters completely – which is harder than killing someone in some ways, because at least if you kill them they existed. If you cut them, they’re just gone.
It’s probably too early to say whether the edits are going well, but there’s definite progress in a linear fashion, which is good. And right now, despite the headache of moving scenes in the timeline and then making sure characters aren’t discussing events that haven’t happened yet – or worse, performing actions or visiting places that can’t be possible yet – it’s really fun.
That’s how you can tell I’m a debut author, I think. Because I’m finding my revisions fun. Because everything’s so new and exciting, I’m bouncing around like a puppy with a new toy and I’m happy to keep on playing with it. It helps that I’m on annual leave from the day job this week, so I can really just focus on this and hopefully get as many major revisions as possible done this week. I expect it will get more draining when I get back to work and have to spend all day at a computer and then come home to an evening at a different computer.
But for now, the radio silence is down to furious editing. You can catch me on Twitter though, @AnnaSmithWrites. It gets a bit random on there.
See you on the flip side.
Currently reading (when I get chance): Infernal, by Mark de Jager (BUY THIS BOOK)
Currently listening: ELO compilation
Currently watching: the latest season of The Flash, whatever number that is.
Anna Stephens, word seeker 