#mostly re-reading the edit letter was basically me going like: 'ughhh FINEEEE I see your valid points about all of this...'

[cielrouge]

Soooo I got my edit letter back from my freelance editor for my Nanowrimo boarding school mystery WIP novel and it was like...8 pages long. 

So my initial reaction was: 

Followed by:

And then:

And lastly:

My freelance editor’s overall assessment (which he summed up as nicely as possible, bless him) was ‘there’s no mystery, yet alone plot lol’ where I’m essentially gonna have to do an extensive revision. Like pretty much an entire rewrite womp womp. I do however, bless his soul for his editorial comments which are always on fiyahhh and included my favorite ones above ahaha. 

I gave it another day to process the edit letter before tackling the 194 editorial comments he had for the draft in word doc form which I reviewed today. Pretty much most of them were on point. And I do love the fact that he warned me ahead of time: “I might read this letter with a glass of something strong or a pastry in hand.” 

Which I did and drank like 5 cups of black tea in a row while reading it rofl.

A part of me KNOWS that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself since duh, it’s only a first draft, so it was bound to be rough. But I think like most writers, my first reaction when having to do a revision/rewrite is usually:

I mean that’s pretty much how I felt when my agent presented the idea of doing another revision of novel #2 last month before we pursue a second submission round. And I’m sooo glad she asked me last month instead of back in December based on some editorial feedback passes we’d gotten - since if she had asked then, I most likely would have been like: ‘I already revised twice this year, no thank ya lol’ But I guess psychologically with last month being in the new year, I was more amendable and gradually warmed up to the idea. So, now I’m just waiting on re-edits from her so I can tackle the revision again. I also loved the fact during our call two weeks ago she was all like: ‘Oh I have the second submission list all prepped and ready btw. We just need to revise first.’

Anywho, so that’s where I am now in terms of my writing lyfe~~~ I’m going to a write-in session with some friends tomorrow, so I’ll probably just whine more about revising with them tomorrow in-person ahaha. 

I HAD been hoping to start plotting out novel #5 officially this month, but alas between this edit letter for novel #4/Nanowrimo boarding school mystery WIP and how I’ll inevidently have to change gears when I do get back re-edits from my agent for novel #2 (Since I wanna go back out on sub again dammit!!!) I’ll probably have to put novel #5 on the backburner for now...