Here’s the second half of what I started blogging last night, but was too groggy to finish. Working with the editor person is always an adventure, because I have one idea of what I wanted to write, the editor person has a vision of what it could look like, and then there is the matter of what’s on the page. Let’s just say I think a lot faster than I type, orphaning some very important parts of the sentence. Like verbs. Or prepositions. Or maybe I leave out a sentence that really needs to be there, that is crucial to understand what is happening.
On later review, the mind, well my mind anyway, has the tendency to fill in the missing words, completing the sentences as I thought them in the first place. This “habit” makes for some very interesting reading.
Editor person lets out an enormous belly laugh at things like that. And that’s why I’m here, to make editor person laugh. But my point is that I make a lot of mistakes, and I don’t always see them when I’m making them. That’s why editor person is so critical. They see EVERYTHING and they catch the screw ups. Just try and slip something by editor person. I dare you.
Unfortunately editor person doesn’t have enough time to review my blogs, so errors may find their way into the entries now and again. I’ll try my best to catch them.

Just got back from working with the editor person. On the whole it went very well. They gave this go round a B+. Not too shabby. Not where I want it to be in the final product, but very close to a solid draft, something that I can shop around, without worrying about the manuscript getting tossed for grammar or technical glitches. More importantly I feel it’s worth paying for. I would buy it, if I didn’t write it myself. After implementing these changes I’m going to be able to hold up the book and say, yeah, this is mine. This is what I can do. It’s not all I can do, or all I ever will do, but this is something. With the time I had to work with, I gave it everything I had. I didn’t hold back.

Holding back has been a long standing problem for me. Back in high school I ran cross country, and it took me two years of never finishing better than the middle of the pack before I realized where I went wrong. I was a strong runner, but I was afraid to break hard off the starting line and run with the guys who took off so much faster. I reasoned that they would fall off later in the race and I could pass them.

My strategy was all kinds of messed up. Sure, some guys did start too fast and flame out. But many of the guys who went out full tilt, finished a lot better than I did. Lots of them seemed to finish in the top ten. In junior year, I tore off the line just like the fatest sprinters, throwing caution to the wind. Much to my surprise it was a lot easier to keep the momentum going. When you start strong, it’s a lot easier to finish strong. And there’s a lot less people nipping at your heels. Suddenly I was finishing in the top ten.

I’ll post more about the editing session tomorrow.