ARE YOU EVER DONE EDITING?

Here's the thing about today's post--Are you ever done editing? -- I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the answer is a resounding NO.

It was with great pleasure that I sent off what I thought was a final submission manuscript for THE DEVIL'S DUE. I'd been working on read-throughs, critiques and edits with an author friend so it had to be ready. In turn, I do the same for his manuscripts when he asks me to.

Well, we went through THE DEVIL'S DUE with what we thought was the proverbial "fine tooth comb", but I guess there were gaps in the teeth, because after the manuscript was on it's way, my friend decided to skate through the first few chapters again. Maybe it was for old times sake. Or, maybe to see what a great job we'd done by finding glitches and errors and fixing them before submission.

Instead, he found more things that we missed. One thing led to another, and before you knew it we were making our way through the manuscript again, with changes or corrections in almost every chapter. Well, since he really liked the story and didn't mind going through it again, it was sort of fun. This time we were really careful. We were going to catch every errant comma, every typographical transposition, and anything else that dared slip past our astute eyes the first time. There. It was done! I resubmitted the manuscript to my publisher, confident that every single thing had been ferreted out.

But no--now my friend was suffering withdrawal symptoms. He needed to look for commas. He missed the story. Begin round three. It was bound to be boring, because there was nothing left to find--or was there?

You guessed it. Things we'd sailed right past now were painfully obvious. We've become THE DEVIL'S DUE junkies, making our way through it for the third time--needing our fix for the day. Gotta find commas--don't care if they're ones that are missing or ones that shouldn't be there. Quick, I need to find a glitch in the timeline. Can't find any. Oh no. Are timeline faux pax off the radar now? Okay, give me a reference that could be clearer, right name in the wrong place. Anything. As my friend e-mailed me recently, "Gotta...edit."

Seriously, this manuscript has reinforced the already proven concept that many times our eyes read what we think we see, not what is actually there. That's how those pesky errors might sneak past us. One readthrough is not enough, two might do it, but three are better, I guess. However, when three is complete, the rest will be left to my publisher's editor. That is unless my friend needs another fix of THE DEVIL'S DUE.

--ARLISS ADAMS

DREAMS CAN COME TRUE

More than fourteen years ago I had the idea for a romantic suspense novel. I knew absolutely nothing about writing fiction, although I had written many magazine articles. I thought a book had to be big to be published, so I kept writing and writing---no timeline, no real plotting, just an idea that kept growing and a manuscript that was bigger than War and Peace.

Well, I'd love to say it was an instant success but then they say there's a bridge in Brooklyn for sale for a good price, too. Just Kidding!! As one of my friends who had published thrillers said, "It's too long, it is filled with cliches, doesn't ring true--sorry, I don't think it will ever get published." And, it didn't.

It was rewritten, put aside, rewritten, worked through with a web critique group, rewritten, worked through with a writer's group, rewritten. I think you get the idea. Years passed and this book kept changing and changing. Still the same premise, but I was learning how to write tight fiction.

If you follow this blog, I'll be writing about what it took to finally be offered a contract after playing with this "dream of a book" for more than fourteen years, and giving insight into how some of the characters were born. Yep. That's right. It will be out sometime next year, as a set of two books. The first one is "A Dream Lost". Nope, it's not about my dream lost, because I finally found the right combination.

I'd like to share the some of the emotions that bubbled to the top while writing this, because in using personalities and traits of people who were very close to me, in many cases they became "composite people", it was like reliving incidents in my own life. Not those in the books. They are fiction. But, what inspired me to write them? Many writers dig down to personal experiences and then mold and shape them into the scene they are after. That's what I did.

That's all for today...

Arliss