Editing

Like yesterday, my blog posts for the next few days are inspired by the movie “Julie and Julia”. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know that Julia Child and her co-authors were not happy when their editors asked them to make big changes in their cook book. They said goodbye to the publisher and took their book elsewhere. How realistic is that? Oh, I’m sure other authors have done that and still do it. But is it RIGHT? I don’t know that it’s exactly WRONG, but every editor, every publisher I’ve ever worked with requires edits. Some more than others. It seems childish of me to take your toy and run to another playground just because the publisher wants changes. Julia Child got lucky that they found another publisher that wanted their book as is. However, I give Julia and company credit for having tested each recipe and rewritten the book at least once in the beginning. For those who are just beginning the writing journey or who haven’t tried yet, that’s par for the course. Sometimes we have to rewrite our books at least once and edit several times. Even though three of my books were edited by their first publisher and had been previously released, the second publisher who re-released them still required more edits. For better or worse, edits are part of the package. I used to hate edits. Ask my critique partners. I’m still not in love with them but see the merit and opportunity to really polish and perfect my stories. I try to make the process fun now.