Editing Time Again

Well, it’s that time again.  I finished the rough draft of my latest book, “Repercussions Abound.”  I sat back for a few days and took my ceremonial victory lap.  Now comes the beginning of the dreaded part of writing…editing.  Imagine your manuscript as a human body you’ve created.  You are a surgeon about to cut it open in an exploratory fashion to look for flaws.  You cause pain but not too much as most of the body looks good.  Then you turn the body over to your beta reader and they cut deeper.  This, in turn, causes more pain.  They find flaws you missed and others you didn’t think were a problem.  But this was simply armature hour.  The expert surgeon called The Editor comes in with a cleaving knife and starts to hack at the body.  His cuts go deep into the body and go so far as to want to remove vital organs.  Now the fight begins.  The body belongs to you.  Many things the Editor is right about but some are being done just to put their stamp on the body.  It is up to you to decide where to give in and where to stand your ground.  It is a painful time to watch the body be dissected in such a gruesome manner.  You think of the months you spent planning the body and the many more months spent creating it.  It is a tough and agonizing call in which you are not always right…but neither is the Editor.  So that’s what I will spend my free time doing for the next while.  I’m doing my own edits now and soon will have my beta reader go through it.  For now the pain is minimal.