I needed an editor, I found one! I sent my manuscript to see if we could be a good match, and after a Zoom chat, we decided to go ahead. Next came the contract. Editing does not come cheap. Along with the contract came the timeline: a month for the developmental edit. Then I got the whole thing back with all the suggestions for changes, edits, cuts, and clarifications. My original text was not changed, just all marked up in Windows red. It was now my task to go through and accept or reject and make the suggested changes happen. I had two months to do that work.
When I saw what this involved, I did have a bit of a panic Two months and right over Christmas and New Year! To carve out some serious time to do this, I moved my out-of-bed time to 5 am. I had to deal with two enormous issues: my novel was too long at 120,000 words and I had to sort out the Points of View – e.g. who is telling the story and when. My editor also suggested that my hero was coming out as a not very nice person so maybe I would like to look at that!
My story is set on the Camino de Santiago and I was anxious to keep faithfully to the sequence of the trail, so shortening the story was a challenge. Spoiler alert: I did call on a train and a bus to help it along. Sorting out the Point of View called for scenes to be left on the editing floor. (the whole POV thing warrants a future post.)
There were sad and painful moments as favorite passages had to GO. I had to be tough enough to accept the edit comments, which can be like death from many pointy pens. But I did learn a lot and my eyes and brain got trained to see what was not working. It was good to see my kid all smartened up, slimmed down, and the story trotting along at a good pace. I got down to 90,000 words, and even made Bob a nicer guy!