This was the beginning of a series of reworking and edits. My editing consisted of a reworking of many sections, deleting, rewriting, changing words for others that seemed better as I continually second guessed everything I wrote. Suddenly I was finding myself having to look up words I’d used all my life to check they meant what I’d thought they meant. All the time aiming to add richness to the text, consistency to the writing and to try and avoid leaving in anything that was too idiotic!

This took about three months to complete and after the edit the manuscript was vastly improved but I knew there was something fundamentally wrong with it, specifically with the opening. I felt too close to it to know what so it was then that I decided to ask two friends to read it.

The list of people who knew I was writing anything was very small but these two were part of that list and had been asking to read it all along. It was because of these types of demands on me that the list was small in the first place!

They were given a strict brief on being brutally honest, to give me feedback on any aspect of the story they liked/disliked, anything that jumped out at them as out of place etc. I’m not sure what I was expecting from them but I guess I hoped one of them would magically resolve my problem with the opening – that however was probably a little unrealistic, and unfair, of me.

Their feedback was useful; they both enjoyed reading it, and had to put up with me demanding to know what they didn’t like about it – which reassuringly seemed very little. However ‘the opening issue’ was brought up and I still didn’t have a solution. I made more changes from their comments and went through the manuscript again, a mini edit this time, but I knew I now needed help from a professional so started on my search to find one!

Georgia

Currently reading ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’ by Robert Galbraith

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