Editing and Weeding

Sigh. It  has been one of those mornings. I was feeling pretty good. But, I've spent most of my morning making kids do their chores and school. Took a break from edits last night and wrote. I wrote about 2500 words yesterday, probably doubling my month's total. I'd have to go look at earlier blogs to check for sure, but I've spent most of this month editing! Even some of the earlier word counts were from adding in scenes, description, etc while editing.

I EDITED A LOT THIS PAST MONTH. May was edit month because, well, just because. Then June came and OMG it was all about edit this and edit that LOL Well, I'm an editing fool! Editing is a lot like weeding. I told my critique parter, I wanted to be writing, crocheting, and planting. Not, editing, wishing for time, and WEEDING. But, think of how fast the weeds grow in your garden? Or your friends garden if you don't have one. I leave my weeds for a day or two and SLAM! Even averaging 30 minutes a day in weeding upkeep, they get away from me.

Well, same for editing. If I don't spend regular intervals editing, I start getting lazy in my writing and more problems will be there when it's time to edit. And, as has happened in my garden this week when I was too busy (and in too much pain) to do much yardwork and new weeds were introduced, you'll end up with new problems you hadn't noticed before.

There is also a lot of good in weeding. This is the first year we've really gotten this yard under control. For various reasons, the yard has lain fallow for a number of years, not even grass in last few due to flooding having completely ruined the yard. And, when weeding areas I've planted some ground cover, I've also discovered some new wildflowers growing :) It's fun and exciting to find them, especially since I'm sure the seeds had lain there, dormant, until I watered and cared for the area.

Same with editing. You will find unexpectedly good places that you know you wrote, but had somehow forgotten how beautiful they were in context. How, when working really hard at getting this or that skill, unexpected extras happen in your writing. Those moments when you see your book improve, the quality raised another notch. That is what editing is about. A beautiful discovery of gems and sanding and polishing them until they shine, like a rose among the thorns.


I haven't figured out how to write the code so that when you click on my cover of The Ulfric's Mate, it'll go to my publisher's website for order, so I'm going to inlcude the link here (it took me years to figure out how to do THAT much) about once a week :) Thanks to everyone who has already ordered and if you haven't yet, what are you waiting for? :D :D The cover alone is worth the price of admission.