Editing and Blogging

Oh dear. I was doing so well too. But it looks like I’ve broken my new year’s resolution and missed a couple of weeks of blogging. It’s a good thing I promised not to beat myself up too much about it, isn’t it? I’ll just try and get back on track again!

I’ve had a new experience this month which has been very exciting and very scary at the same time. I’ve had my first ever set of notes sent from a professional editor! I think I mentioned in a previous blog post that I’ve had a short story accepted for publication, well the editor (who is lovely!) got back to me with her comments… and some changes she wanted me to make.

I’ve got to admit that I was totally terrified about opening the document up when it came into my inbox. I’d managed to convince myself that the editor hated the whole story, and that she was going to tell me to change EVERYTHING! You do hear some horror stories about editors telling writers to cut all their favourite bits of a story or novel, but I think I was imagining it would be worse than that. I was picturing it more like getting a bit of homework back, with all my mistakes circled in red pen. See me after class, Valentine.

But… hooray!… it was nothing like that. I should’ve remembered that if the editor (Hannah) hadn’t liked my story, she wouldn’t have accepted it in the first place. Sure, she’d made quite a few comments (and pointed out a few mistakes), and it was really difficult to read those at first. I had to resist taking things personally, which was made a lot easier by the fact that the comments were all very kind and helpful. Once I got over my initial fear and read through them properly, I found myself agreeing with them all and making the changes happily.

So not so scary after all. And another new step taken! Now I’m just excited about the story being published later this year.

Gold star, Valentine.