Books

Thursday 16 April 2009

Finished!

I have now finally finished the editing of my book, Eating Blackbirds, and have sent it back to the Editor with my fingers and my eyes firmly crossed. It has been four weeks of working every spare moment to bring a fuller and more polished novel ready to hit the best seller lists. I have taken out references to cat vomit with baby rabbits in, rides in ice cream vans, major amputations and general lewdness and rude words; in fact it has been quite a shaming experience to have it in black and white as to just how foul my mouth can be.

The sad part was that the lessons that I thought I had learnt from editing Chocolate Mousse, had not actually been as well incorporated into Eating Blackbirds as I would have liked. I had been picturing a scenario whereby I got a small list of easily-made grammatical errors and a few typos that I could correct over a cuppa - instead I had the 108 different points, some quite major. It has made me realise that Novel Number Three needs far more work than I had thought, even at this stage of writing it. I am determined that should novel number 3 get accepted, it will have just a few of those neither / either, wonder / wander dilemmas - not full-scale re-writes about places on the body where moles can be found.

I would also liked to have thought that when the editing was done, I would sit back in a clean chair and relax, perhaps watch a bit of telly, maybe even read a paper. No. Instead, I have been at it with a wheelbarrow and a shovel in the lounge, a power-washer on the kitchen floor and a blow-torch in the bedrooms. It is really quite disgusting as to what can build up over just a small amount of time. My only hope is that the cat-sick scene wasn't prophetic and that I just haven't found it yet...