EDITING HEAVEN OR EDITING HELL?

I recently got back notes and edits on 'The Worth of Scars' from my wonderful copyeditor Marie. Whilst I haven't got through all of her amendments to the manuscript yet, I can say with some certainty that she has done an excellent job, and would highly recommend her to anyone looking for an editor (find her at https://reedsy.com/freelancers/o-marie).

As I make my way through her notes and suggestions this month, though, alongside doing yet another of my own editing passes, I've found myself surprised - as I do every time I come to do this - by how much my opinion on editing my own work varies day-by-day.

Some writers love to edit their work, some (most, going by the prevailing opinion online and anecdotally) seem to hate it. For myself, I find it depends almost entirely upon my mood.

This is true of writing in general, of course. Creativity and mood are inextricably linked in ways I have never managed to wholly get to the bottom of. Yet I find that a lack of creativity and a low mood when writing (and when I say writing I mean producing a draft from scratch - writing is re-writing and all that, but to simplify things I'm distinguishing between the two) usually only results in either maddeningly slow progress or a complete lack of it. While editing, though, particularly further along in the process, the same low mood usually manifests in the same amount of work being done, only feeling less satisfied with the results.

What I find interesting about this is that whichever side of the metaphorical bed I get up on each morning seems certain to determine how good I think the writing I am working on that day will be. Editing your own work, by necessity, requires one to read the same chapters over and over and over and over again (and over and over and over - repeat ad nauseum), sometimes re-reading the same chapters in a relatively short space of time. There's been countless occasions I have returned to a chapter I either loved or loathed last time I worked through it, only to then form completely the opposite opinion. Sure, this may be because in previous passes I have made it better (or worse), but often the amount of changes made in each pass are so negligible - a few cut words here or the odd re-structured sentence there - that I find it hard to believe that the quality of the entire chapter is altered so dramatically. The difference, it seems to me, comes down to my frame of mind when editing. So much so that I have wondered several times about noting down my mood (probably in some kind of score form - shout out to anyone else who has ever had to make a mood diary) as well as any thoughts I have on each chapter when going through manuscripts in future, in an effort to help me try and keep an objective view on how the project is shaping up.

Extrapolating this out further, though, beyond my experiences working on my own writing, this all makes me wonder how prone I am (and people in general are) to letting my mood colour how I view other media that isn't my own, as well. How much of a difference did it make that I started that book I DNF'd during an awful hangover? Was that series actually great, but I just didn't give it a chance because I was bored and restless and stressed when watching the pilot? Of course, I've always known that this was true to some extent, but going by how vastly different I can view my own work depending on my mood, it does make me question whether my judgement as a whole might be just as extreme.

Anyway, this is all by way of saying that editing on The Worth of Scars is progressing well. It seems to be shaping up nicely - though I may have a very different opinion on it tomorrow, of course. I still feel well on track to publish later this year, and will continue giving updates as things move forward (lots of exciting stuff coming up soon, I hope!). Thanks again to Marie for all her efforts, and to anyone bothering to reading these incoherent ramblings.

Cheers,

Gabe