An homage to the Edit Queen
I was thinking today that my wife, Mary, is one of the sweetest, easy going people I've ever met. This applies to just about every aspect of her life–except for when it comes to editing my books.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, just observing. After months of grueling rewriting on my recently released book, Dog River Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery), I've started on the rewrite of my next release and at this moment Mary is sitting out at the pool going through the first draft of the book. She's looking for errors, and from my experience, she'll find plenty.
For some reason, no matter how many times I read through a manuscript, I miss things. Words, tense, spelling. My eyes are willing, but my mind plays games with me.
And when I'm stubborn about some point and refuse to change something, Mary doesn't just let it go and let me have my way. No. She points the problem out over and over until I start to think maybe she's right.
Mary read Dog River Blues seven or eight times before we finished the book. Each time she read it thoroughly and each time she found errors.
In fact, it became a running joke at the end of each day's edits I'd ask Mary how she liked the book and she'd reply, "It's really good, Mike," even on the eighth read.
Now I think anyone who's ever written a book knows that after eight reads the book isn't good, it's boring. You know who the killer is, you know what's going to happen in the end, hell–there are sections of dialog you can quote by heart.
So the purpose of this post is to thank my Edit Queen, who I must admit I sometimes refer to as 'The Edit Nazi'.
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