editing

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If it Wasn’t Arduous

My mother-in-law recently took the family and I on an awesome trek to the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. Though the journey to and from wasn’t the most memorable part, I will share what it looked like coming home:

Thirty hours in transit.

Boat to Zodiac to bus to airport and so on.

Four airports (two in Spanish-speaking Ecuador).

Customs, leaving Baltra (Galapagos) and arriving in Miami (90 minutes, zombies after an overnight flight).

One hotel room for eight hours, enough time to watch a Spanish-language “The Martian” and some soccer (for those of us who can’t sleep-on-demand) and veg and think about dinner. (At some point, fear of falling asleep and missing a flight overrides a need to try to sleep.)

Waiting, and sitting, and waiting, and pacing, and…

I could go into more detail (the poor service of American Airlines, the do-not-drink-the-tapwater order in Guayaquil) but we’ve all been there before. Life shunted into a string of waiting spells, shuffling, patience–international travel these days.

So it’s no surprise I’m reminded of the finishing steps for publishing a novel. The tons of work and countless (countable?) hours. The waiting and pacing. The parade of decisions and second-guessing and, yes, retracing of steps (your own, and thousands of others before you). At the end, you’re fried.

Sound familiar?

It’s no exaggeration to say I’ve read through my novels 20 times each beyond the initial writing phase. Who hasn’t edited a paragraph 13 times (the tone, the word choice) only to come back on a second read-through and cut it entirely? Fat, superfluous, saved for another work.

(Ironically, this journey home was in one ‘straight shot’ whereas the completion of a book is spread over, say, 3-4 months.)

Of course, if the whole process wasn’t arduous, would it even be worth it? If you weren’t so sick of reading your own work (or cramped seat 17E) you could go ape-shit by the end, have you worked enough?

So, as I begin the finishing process for a fifth time (Destruction) I’m going to pin up a copy of this picture. The big Galapagos sea lion on his beach, basking and stretching his back and playing king. Because sometimes the world is this pristine. Sometimes the water is that blue.

A Galapagos sea lion showing off his stuff, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.

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Editing Destruction

Things are looking up for Captain June Vereeth. With friends, she escaped the madness of icy P-75. She brought a couple trophies (prisoners of war) back from the outlaw world of Shen-Zinkh. Now she’s even having fun climbing the picturesque mountains of Zycarsus with a new male friend, smiling in the sunshine…

Well, not exactly. She and this new friend (nicknamed Hulk) and 30 other soldiers are hauling themselves up 3000 feet into a maddening fogged-in world. They’re looking for a downed freighter. They’re lost, because they can’t use anything electronic and nobody has a map. And those pesky Mitasterites will have some competition for deadliest foe in this abandoned world.

Justin Edison's Destruction, second in the Woman at War series, will be out in 2018.

First draft done, coffee chugged, I’m now editing Destruction (love my cheery title). And it’s going…well, it’s going. To once-again begin the process of editing a book is to wrestle with a bunch of questions.

Is this what I wanted to write?

Is this story good enough?

Do the right people die (it’s about war) or lose their way?

Am I accurately rendering Vereeth and her flaws and strengths?

Can this heroine reconcile the terrible cost of armed conflict, when she’s often stuck with the most difficult choices?

After two years of notes (the opening chunk came to mind before I was done with ‘Endgame‘) do I have the product I need to have?

Am I a good-enough writer for this?

Justin Edison's three available books on a shelf

Justin Edison’s three available books on a shelf

Time will tell.

Maybe.