Saturday, April 18, 2015

Lessons learned from this round of edits

So, at 11:22 a.m. MDT, I hit the send button on my e-mail back to that extremely kind editor that I mentioned recently.  I have been working on putting her ideas into their place for 39 days and now what's left is to wait to see what she thinks about how I implemented them.

So, while waiting, here are a few lessons learned:

1)  My friends are awesome.  They texted and called me, sometimes at 4 in the morning, to see how I was doing and if I needed anything.  They sent me pictures of badgers when I needed to be badgered.  They even sent me a stuffed badger and helped me name her Susurrus.  They kept track of when my deadline was and liked my Facebook posts a lot by way of encouragement.

2)  My friends can be counted on for brainstorms.  I'm not sure if I told this story here, but one of the things I had to explore in this round of edits was the limit of the curse and what would allow the curse to win.  I first figured out that it had to be something to do with adulthood, because that is a point that differs so widely that the age of majority is nothing but a number.  Then I refined it to a specific moment in life and worked out the why of that technicality.  Then I picked on my two most extreme feminists.  One is my amazingly strong lesbian friend who always keeps me informed on the LGBTQ community's rights and issues.  One is my fantastically intelligent mom of 2 friend who has something to say about EVERYTHING related to women.  I figured that if I could get both of them to not hate that idea, I would be fine.  I had six people of various sexualities and backgrounds give me feedback in the end and they all loved it for different reasons.

3)  My roommate is a never-ending fount of editing power.  I wouldn't let her actually read this final draft because she just finished meeting one of my deadlines and has already edited the book and put up with my "Hey, could you give me feedback on something"s.  That doesn't mean that she didn't sit down with me for an hour the first night and several occasions since to hash out the details.  I have promised her that unless this manuscript comes back with really unfavorable responses, the next time I want her to read my book is for a blog tour.

4)  That stupid quote about the best-laid plans of mice and men is true.  I thought giving myself 40 days was so freaking reasonable.  E, the mystery editor, told me it could take between 2 weeks and a couple of months.  And then I woke up 11 days into editing with bronchitis and it didn't leave for two weeks.  Granted, that's when I spent all of my time getting feedback from a wide spectrum of women, but I would have rather been well and able to write.

5)  Goals are my friend.  I would ask a random friend to give me a number each day and make that my wordcount goal.  I wrote 520 and 1266 and such things and then usually had energy left over to write more.

6)  I need a nap.  No, seriously, I think I'll be able to sleep properly for the first time in weeks tonight.


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