Beautiful Mess in Progress
No book is perfect, but your editor can help push it closer to Perfection and further away from Beautiful Mess. She (or he) does this by making comments in a multi-page editorial/revision letter. Comments like: “I’m confused. Why can’t she sleep?” or “Isn’t she getting blood in her car that would incriminate her later?” or even “It’s ‘thong’ not ‘thongs.‘”
Brilliant. These changes I could make, no problem. So I tackled my editor’s helpful editorial letter with great aplomb. After three weeks of tweaking, reworking, and burnishing, I thought I’d finally made it to the light at the end of the tunnel. And then I hit the book’s Final Boss Scene… (That’s a gaming term, for all you non-geeks out there. The book’s climax. No, not *that* one. The final one. Yes. There. You’ve got it.)
Anyway, once I made it to this, I picked at a piece of loose mortar between two bricks and made a small hole. From that hole, water dripped. I put my thumb over the hole and a new one began spouting water a few feet away. And another, and another. I raced to patch up all the holes, but as soon I patched one, another sprang a leak. Before I knew it, the whole damn thing was leaking like a bad silicone implant.
I had to remind myself: Beautiful Mess. Deep breaths. It will be okay.
And it was, because I managed to patch all the holes before the wall crumbled…I think.
Now my patched up manuscript is flying through the internet tubes all the way back to my publisher. There, the Beautiful Mess will shuffle along, waiting to be read by my editor for the 3rd time (once when my agent pitched it and she decided to buy it; twice, in order to compose my editorial letter for my revisions; and thrice, to see if I was able to patch up all those holes successfully). My fingers are crossed that there will be no need for a fourth read-through.
With that done, it’s time to rest for a few moments then take a crack at revising Book 2. My editor hasn’t read this one yet, so I’m going to reinforce the brick wall before she does; maybe if I do, I won’t have to patch up too many holes later.
