My little darlings.

If you're a writer, then you KNOW I don't mean my kids. I mean special turns of phrases, or specific characters. I have a book out on preorder (as I think the WHOLE world must now know :P) and went through MANY stages of editing. The only one that gave me real trouble was the line item edit, and some of that seems to be "cultural" differences. Most of which, a forward seems to have helped. (Werewolf lore seems to have been mistaken for actual Native American lore. Um, no. Yeah. LOL) I just had to find a few links to add to the geographical information and voila. Not anything difficult. I have no issues cutting things out or rewording them for clarification. I want my reader to see, feel, and hear the whole bit. Now I know you can't please everyone, but I try :) LOL

In fact, even with cutting out whole paragraphs, I almost always end up with more. Yes, even on the edits I did for The Ulfric's Mate. I do believe it started out as 54k+ and change (well it started out as 12k+ if you've been following along lol but the contract was offered on the 54k+ version) and is now nearly 58k. Only 13 words shy. Perhaps I should have made the characters speak more :D LOL

Anyway, whether it's changing the wording, or straight out cutting whole lines or paragraph's, I'm pretty much, *bow to the lovely editor who is the goddess of words* and do what I'm told and try to learn from it. But last night, as I pre-read all the edits and comments before starting up (all the grammar changes are done, now time to dig in with it on paper and FIX this thing), I realized, for the first time, I'm going to have to kill one of my little darlings. The phrasing didn't come across correctly and to explain it longer will bog down the story too much. Sigh. *insert big crocodile tears falling on pages*

It was a bit of a shock to learn that this really is the first time. Don't get me wrong, I've killed off characters I liked (a fact which stalled my book as it completely changed what could happen in second half. I had nothing to fill in the space with :P) although they weren't my special darlings, put them through the wringer, about the only thing I haven't done to a character is make them stupid. I can't abide stupid hero/heroines. I hate them with a passion. In real life, people use intuition and clues to figure things out, otherwise, how would you know when someone was really mad before they say anything?? Ticks me off when a character is too stupid for words. Okay, off that rant.

But this time, I'm going to have to delete it completely. Whoosh. DELETE DELETE DELETE. Say bon voyage, hasta la vista, baby, good bye, gone. *more crocodile tears*

How does that make me feel? Nostalgic, but happy. Yes, despite the big crocodile tears, this makes me feel happy. It is a step in being a published author (which still hasn't sunk in. I mean, I'm working my arse of here. What? I know. Could be worse. Making money crocheting and growing my own food isn't the worst kind of work a person could be doing :P). A step that means, I have arrived at the real starting line, and that all that happened before was just prelim rounds.

I sure hope this horse doesn't mind a fat, albeit slimming down, jockey riding it :)