Last edits, please
So I’ve excised the heroine and one supporting character. I have replaced them both with a new heroine who combines both roles and personalities. I’ve put in all the other edits and copy-edits (on which more another time maybe). The book is due to go to Production at the end of the month. The editors will need it for a week at least before then. Next week is filling with engagements and the summer holidays loom. I’ve got about one more working day left.
I’ve had one last look and, as I thought, there’s still some stitching to be done.
Editing at this stage of the game is a bit like being a doctor who has to operate on the victims at the scene of his own drink-driving accident. In that:
1) You are not in the best state to be doing this;
2) There is no one else who can do it;
3) Everything you’re looking at is your own fault anyway.
I say ‘not in the best state.’ Even in your first draft it’s hard, as you struggle away at the paragraphs and sentences , to keep in mind what the whole thing will seem like to the reader. I’ve rewritten this manuscript six times now and I can barely imagine how it will read to a fresh pair of eyes. Over the various drafts I’ve cut scenes out, replaced them with other scenes, emphasised themes and de-emphasised them again. I’m getting the author’s equivalent of double vision. I was building up an idea in chapter nine today when I realised that the explanation on which the idea depended had been deleted from chapter three about two drafts back.
Like a concussed and semi-inebriated doctor at the roadside, I’m beginning to wonder which reality I’m in. And there’s delicate work that has to be finished before the Production van, blue lights flashing and sirens wailing, comes haring up to carry the victim away.