On being edited, by self and by others

Whew. Sorry I kinda disappeared there. Last Wednesday was the deadline for my Carina novella. I got it sent off around midnight on Tuesday, then gave myself permission to do nothing on Wednesday. Gave myself the same permission on Thursday, and did a lot of TV watching (finished streaming Saving Grace from Netflix) and reading. By Friday I finally had to dress and venture out, but then it was the weekend, and I spent half of Saturday with the grandkids, and the other half of Saturday with the husband. We had car issues and actually have two in the shop right now, and on Sunday we took the dogs to swim at the park, then it was time for groceries and to get back to life and to writing.

I always hate starting a new story when I know I'll be going back to the one I just finished to do editorial fixes. It's a weird switch of mental gears moving between worlds but it has to be done. I'm a pretty good writer, but that doesn't mean I don't want to be edited. Bugs me when authors say otherwise. It's part of the program, and that professional editorial eye makes the work stronger. True, some editors can get a little sticky with the fingers in the pie, but most I've worked with have nothing but the good of the story in mind when they make suggestions. I've already got a big edit I'm forcing on myself which has to do with the snowy setting. I don't know for snow, but know someone who's an expert. She took pity on me, and my story's horse, and made a suggestion that gets my characters where I need them to be without messing up the rest of the logic.

Now I'm moving into the white hot Texas summer for the first of my Berkley Heat books. White hot Texas summers I know, so I feel right at home in Crow Hill with Dax and Arwen. The tentative release date for the tentatively titled UNDENIABLE is November 2012. Yes, a LONG time away, but hey. I have to write it first! I also had to work some plotting magic. See, when first proposed, the three synopses I wrote were novella length for a single author anthology. But the first two stories are now full novel length. So I spent some brain time over the weekend and again yesterday reading through what I had to find a workable subplot. And I did, so I'm forging ahead!

Next week is the annual Romance Writers of American national conference, and I'm not going this year. What I am going to do, however, is give away a bunch of my writing books, ones I no longer need and someone else may get some use out of. More on that later. For now, I've got to get back to the cowboys …