This was supposed to be the post in which I announced how wonderful it is to be editing.  When friends such as Pat Esden talked about how much they enjoyed editing and re-writing their WIP, I wondered who their dealer was.

But I’ve really been loving round two.  It’s been nearly six months since I typed the last words.  I’ve gone through the stage where I was convinced the darling needed only the attention of one agent and it would be off to instant stardom.  I resisted the stage in which I thought burning would be too good for it, though complete and total chemical annihilation might work.  I spent weeks working on back history, studying plot arcs, dissecting plot point instructions, re-writing the synopsis, and trying out different queries.

This week I printed the whole thing out and started critiquing it just like I would do for a friend, or perhaps like a critique for a friend on steroids.  The critique.  My friends don’t want to be buff that way.

And I loved it!  So many ideas, lots of wonderful solutions already hidden in the manuscript and ready to be teased out, and the boring parts could be shed like so much dead skin.

But why is this post not about the joys of re-writing?  Why am I not editing my way to nirvana right now?  Because I took the WIP to the pool today…and I didn’t bring it home.

Luckily it was not drowned, and while I haven’t in fact set eyes on it, I’m told it’s in good hands and has been rescued from the night winds.  I plan a reunion tomorrow, and must now only pray that the WIP will not hold my neglect against me, and will recognize that it was not maliciously abandoned, but only temporarily misplaced.  Certainly not that word which begins with L and rhymes with cost.