Editing Caves and Meerkat Tendencies
It’s a sunny morning as I emerge, blinking and bewildered, from my editing cave.
Last time I posted, I think I may have told you I didn’t have much to do to my 2025 book. Ha! I lied. If not to you, then certainly to myself. My editor, Tiffany Yates Martin, consistently asked me to dig deeper in her notes on my manuscript, so for the past month that’s what I’ve done, submerging myself in my characters and their worlds, living their lives, seeing through their eyes. I’ve been vague and unfocused in ‘real life,’ forgetting to do things, staring blankly, popping up only now and then like a meerkat checking for trouble.
Now my edits are submitted, and I have a long, nerve-wracking week ahead waiting to see how they’re received. I hope Tiffany, and Alicia, my commissioning editor at Lake Union, like what I’ve done. I’m vulnerable because digging deeper requires you to dig deeper inside yourself. Like an actor, to think, when have I felt this way? To find ways to express those feelings that don’t involve too many dripping tears - show, don’t tell!
Digging deeper means doing your level best not to think about people you know reading your words after they’re published. Although fortunately neither of my two brothers - who have always delighted in making fun of me (in a loving way, you understand…) will ever read one of my novels, so that’s one embarrassment less. But there are the members of my book clubs, my women’s Institute groups, my ex students, the people who live in my street, etc, etc.
Oh well, it’s done now, and this morning all the words I’ve written are still spiraling around in my head and I’m really missing my characters. There’s always a void after I’ve finished working on something; a slight sadness when really I ought to be celebrating meeting a deadline, making something I hope and feel is gripping and moving.
Still, there was an effective distraction at the weekend when I went to a local hedgehog rescue centre with my partner for a photo shoot. A UK magazine is going to be running a feature close to the publication of Prickly Company about my volunteering work as a driver for Hodemedods Hedgehog Support and asked for photos. Jermy the rescue hedgehog - with a little encouragement from Katie, his carer - was happy to oblige. It was a rare sunny day, the blossom was out on the cherry tree and it matched my hair. It wasn’t difficult to smile, even though Jermy was the prickliest hedgehog I’ve ever held, hence the gardening gloves. Ouch!
Last time I posted, I think I may have told you I didn’t have much to do to my 2025 book. Ha! I lied. If not to you, then certainly to myself. My editor, Tiffany Yates Martin, consistently asked me to dig deeper in her notes on my manuscript, so for the past month that’s what I’ve done, submerging myself in my characters and their worlds, living their lives, seeing through their eyes. I’ve been vague and unfocused in ‘real life,’ forgetting to do things, staring blankly, popping up only now and then like a meerkat checking for trouble.
Now my edits are submitted, and I have a long, nerve-wracking week ahead waiting to see how they’re received. I hope Tiffany, and Alicia, my commissioning editor at Lake Union, like what I’ve done. I’m vulnerable because digging deeper requires you to dig deeper inside yourself. Like an actor, to think, when have I felt this way? To find ways to express those feelings that don’t involve too many dripping tears - show, don’t tell!
Digging deeper means doing your level best not to think about people you know reading your words after they’re published. Although fortunately neither of my two brothers - who have always delighted in making fun of me (in a loving way, you understand…) will ever read one of my novels, so that’s one embarrassment less. But there are the members of my book clubs, my women’s Institute groups, my ex students, the people who live in my street, etc, etc.
Oh well, it’s done now, and this morning all the words I’ve written are still spiraling around in my head and I’m really missing my characters. There’s always a void after I’ve finished working on something; a slight sadness when really I ought to be celebrating meeting a deadline, making something I hope and feel is gripping and moving.
Still, there was an effective distraction at the weekend when I went to a local hedgehog rescue centre with my partner for a photo shoot. A UK magazine is going to be running a feature close to the publication of Prickly Company about my volunteering work as a driver for Hodemedods Hedgehog Support and asked for photos. Jermy the rescue hedgehog - with a little encouragement from Katie, his carer - was happy to oblige. It was a rare sunny day, the blossom was out on the cherry tree and it matched my hair. It wasn’t difficult to smile, even though Jermy was the prickliest hedgehog I’ve ever held, hence the gardening gloves. Ouch!
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