Editing as an Olympic Sport

So you work a full time day job. Who doesn't? I won't get any sympathy there, will I?

But then you come home, and you really want to get the final draft done on your book and get it to your agent, so she can sell it and you can become the next best-seller (I mean hasn't Dan Brown already had his day in the sun?).

So you get home at 5:00, you dust, vacuum, water, or wash anything that absolutely will not live another day without being attended to - maximum time allotment five minutes. Then you make supper. It usually involves opening a bag containing salad and perhaps some sandwich meat. Maximum allotment five minutes including ingestion. Then you tell your cats you love them and you trudge upstairs to the office and you spend the next four or five hours editing/rewriting/proofing/pulling out your hair. Luckily, the bedroom is very close to the office, because then you can manage the few steps to the bed where you fall in (see above) and sleep for up to six whole hours if you're lucky.

Now allotting six whole hours to sleeping is a little indulgent, I realize, when you are portioning out the rest of your day in five minute segments, but the problem I have is at less than six hours, nothing I write the next day actually makes sense.


Try doing this for four or five days in a row. It's harsh. I find I get cabin fever by the end of it. And that's at best. At worst, when I was writing the end of Liar, Liar (about arson) I was having nightmares about my office Christmas tree burning to the ground and I was being arrested by the fire Marshall but I was happy because I was going to get all this free publicity.

So then sometimes I feel a little psychotic.

Which makes me totally understand why so many authors become alcoholics!

(my friend Ramona is not an alcoholic or an author - just a willing model!)


So the edits are done. Are they good? I don't really know, I think so. But after a week of doing this, I tend to see forest only, no trees. Honestly, I lose a bit of objectivity anyway, because it's my work, and because I know everything in my head and therefore cannot always tell if I have forgotten to tell the audience something.

Luckily my agent is heavily into honesty. But in an incredibly creativity-boosting way. I totally attribute any success my book Mind Games has to her comments on an early draft.

Now I'm going to bed (or may already be there - gotta love laptops) and I am going to pull the covers over my head and not think about writing or books for at least 48 hours. I may not even get out of bed for the next 18 hours and I'm pretty sure I won't get out of my pajamas for at least 24 hours.

Do you believe me? Yeah, us writers don't write for the glory, we write because we have to. I'll be sitting at my computer by tomorrow evening at the latest, because The Full Moon People and We'll Always Have Paris both await me.

And PS - love ya mom, thanks for your amazing dedication to the books.