Surviving Editing

I put it off until after the holidays.  Now the time has come to do the new edit on “Quest for the Red Sapphire.”  I must confess that I have not looked forward to this as it is never fun to have your work dissected.  Starting the process yesterday was painful.  In all fairness, the first edit was done by my previous publisher and their editing job was subpar.  The result was that I expected a lot of red corrections and comment balloons on the edit copy.  I was not to be disappointed.  Some of the changes were ones I couldn’t believe were missed the first time.  Other ones seem to just be the editor’s preference.  The ones that I am having the most trouble with, however, are the ones where the editor thinks the writing is too “Flowery” or not angry enough or simply not to his taste.  To be fair, he has some legitimate points but there are also many times I wrote the book a certain way for a certain reason.  I am trying to be thick skinned and open minded but I find myself becoming more defensive.  So I took a long break from the edits.  I will return to them as soon as I have finished here with this blog.  Then I tried to put myself in the editor’s shoes.  This guy is just trying to get the book right and done in the correct fashion.  My style clearly is different from his and that is the source of the stress.  I have no problem fixing the grammar mistakes but he wants things the way he would write it.  I must dig down and try not to take them as personal attacks but rather as a different point of view.  Many times I don’t agree with that point of view but I must try to work with him and take a stand only on the big issues.  I did a sharp contrast from a dreary ending to one chapter to a beautifully depicted sunrise in the next chapter to show stark imagery with a touch of personification.  It took 7 rewrites to get it perfect.  I will not repeat the editor’s remarks but let’s just say he found it unnecessary and the paragraphs of poor quality.  I drew the line there.  I wrote after his comments, “I like it this way.”  Perhaps he is right but much of my style is being cut out.  I felt like I needed to make a stand.  The editing goes on and I will try to follow the direction of the editor as best I can.  In the end, though, I am the writer of this book.