So my final round of edits (I think/hope/pray) have been completed. *Does celebration dance/throws confetti/collapses in exhausted heap* Figured I should touch base with everyone to keep you all appraised of the situation. I’ve moved from the super busy, nerve-racking phase, to the phase where I have an abundance of time on my hands that editing and re-editing had previous filled. Logically, I should be working on the next project, but somehow my mental gearshift is stuck in edits, and if I can’t shift to writing soon, I could very well damage my transmission–the mental kind, but I didn’t want to say that twice. SEE! Shift, damn you, shift!

I’m sure it’ll pass in time, and I hope that writing this blog provides me with the bridge I need between following directions and thinking freely. Which is really what the problem is. During editing, there comes a point where you have to shut down the brain–and the ego along with it–and soldier through the process, or you’ll never complete anything. Now that the process is done, I have to rev up all engines and light a fire under my cerebellum to get it going. That’s not to say that editing is a mindless job, quite the opposite, many times it forced me to think of things that I hadn’t thought before in order to explain or justify a character’s seemingly strange behavior. But when you spend 250 pages adding a comma, deleting a comma, adding a description, deleting your overly excessive repetitive redundant and unnecessarily worded descriptions, you go a little numb after a while. And you’re left feeling a bit wrung out.

I don’t know if everyone does this, but it’s hard for me now–post edits–not to look at every sentence I try to write with a super critical  eye. That can be good, but it can also stump the writing process for some–okay, for me. I need to be that wild stallion, rampaging free through the meadow, while I write. All with the understanding, of course, that all of that wildness will have to be broken in later for the benefit of both horse and rider.

So my plan is to take it easy for the holiday and start fresh next week, hitting the old laptop with new brainstorming ideas and hopefully start the New Year ‘write.’

In the meantime, check out this actually, authentic, factual, real life, totally non-fiction, transcription of a conversation between me and my editor. *(transcription may not contain any actual facts and may, in fact, be paraphrased from Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson ‘s climactic scene in A Few Good Men).

Editor: You want edits?

Me: I think I’m entitled!

Editor: You. Want. Edit?

Me: I want the ending the way it was!

Editor: You can’t have it the way it was! Son, you wrote a book that needs editing, and that editing needs to be done by men with objectivity. Whose going to do that, you? Your friends?

I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for your lost metaphors and you curse my suggestions. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That cutting that scene, saves the pacing. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, improves the novel.

You don’t want the ending the way it was because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you WANT me on those track changes. You NEED me on those track changes.

We use words like, ‘reads better with this,’ ‘out of character,’ and ‘over-the-top.’ We use these words as the backbone of the job spent correcting novels. You use them to start drama.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to someone who writes and rewrites under the blanket of the wisdom which I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it.

I would rather you just said thank you and moved along. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a Chicago Manual of Style and edit your own work. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think your ending should be!*

*(No endings were changed in the editing of this novel)

When I started down this road of publishing my first book, I was filled with many emotions and thoughts. Oddly, the one thing I didn’t think about was what I would do next. The answer–when writing a series, of course–is, start writing the sequel. Simple, right? Well, my brain has other ideas. Specifically, it has every other idea on God’s green Earth except writing a sequel–including writing this blog so I can bitch and moan about how I can’t seem to focus on writing a sequel to my first book. The second most frequent distracting thought? I just discovered how to make popcorn at home that tastes just like my favorite movie theater’s popcorn. Mmmm. Seriously, that is some awfully good popcorn.  The secret is–damn it! I’m doing it again.

Strange as it may seem, though I’ve been trying my hand at a writing career for many, many, many, many, MANY, M-A-N-Y, years, I have yet to write a sequel to any of them. This surprise is made more surprising when you take into account that almost every book idea I’ve ever written was meant to be book one of a series. Since none of those ‘Book ones’ was picked up by a publisher, I never ended up wasting my time writing sequels to a book that might not get picked up or was clearly not polished enough to get picked up. It was better to either rewrite the unwanted manuscript or move onto another, starting from scratch.

I have, however, written de facto sequels or what I like to call, ‘grandfathered’ sequels. This may be unique to me, but I have a habit of writing an entire book as backstory for another book. I usually end up liking this ‘backstory’ book even more than the original book, and then end up trying to publish the prequel as the new book one. I’ve done this so often that I have a nine part book series that I’ve written completely in reverse. The downside is, as I go backwards in time, I find more and more things that will need to be changed in the original books. Plus, I keep coming up with more ideas for other prequels.  If this doesn’t stop I’ll end up writing about two little protozoic cells, waving little protozoic wands and casting the first spells against each other in a a bid to gain more protozoic magic. Heeeeey…That’s not bad.

Anyway, all of that changed when Fantasy Works Publishing  came along, with their wild idea for actually publishing one of my stories.  Wouldn’t you know it–now I have to write an actual, bona fide sequel. Who gave them permission to do a whacky thing like that? Oh. Yeah. That’s right. I did. What was I thinking?

So now I’m doing the thing where I have to take a character and a story I love, and extended it another 300 or so pages. Worse yet, I have to remember key details about said character and said story that I would have otherwise never needed to think about again. I have to make sure the character has grown since the last story, but still keep all of their behavior within the personality framework I’d established in the last book. Basically, I have to do everything equally good or better than I had in the last book. I finally understand the filmmakers tendency to screw up their sequels by throwing needless explosions and lazily repeating the plot of the original movie. Making sequels can be difficult and nerve racking. At least for me it is.  I find myself questioning every sentence, wondering if that was how I’d describe something the last time, or if this or that person is in character. Luckily, I have the editors at Fantasy Works Publishing to help me out with that problem.

Seriously, the pressure is enough to make my head pop like a kernel of corn…Hmmm, popcorn. That sounds yummy.