Editing #2

I finished another editing round of my second (agented) project, and I've reached some conclusions that might not matter to anyone else.

While I was editing DBM, two of my beta readers for executionwip finished the book, and the third one got to the midpoint. While I was focused on DBM, I kept thinking about executionwip. I can't really work on more than one project at a time, and I don't like reading the notes and having to sit on them for an undetermined amount of time. So I waited.

I hate waiting (I know! Great quality to have as a writer…). What this taught me is that I'd rather space out my projects a bit more. I'm planning on editing executionwip while my agent has DBM, and even if there are more rounds of editing for that project, executionwip will not be needing my immediate attention.

Other stuff that I've noticed: I'm still stuck on the same mentality I had while querying. It wasn't even a great mentality to have! What happened when I was querying is that I didn't want to miss out. On what? Good question. I wanted to be quick because I knew how long it could take to find an agent. I can slow down now!

This period of drafting/editing has shown me my weaknesses. I'm so scared of words counts (again, the querying mentality) that I end up skipping on some building blocks and risk crashing the whole thing down. And because world building is not my best skill and, simultaneously, it's something that takes time and raises the word count, I need to pay more attention to it.

Are all of these obvious? Yep. Unfortunately, publishing is an industry that can set your fight or flight instinct pretty easily. I've been on fighting mode, occasionally slipping into flight when I avoid that Google doc.

I've got what I wanted, which was having a backlist ready to go, since there are no guarantees on sub. That means I did what I can and now it's up to the publishing gods! And, maybe, this is the biggest lesson of all that I haven't quite absorb yet: what's out of my hands is out of my hands. Any time I spend worrying about things out of my control is wasted time.