Editing My Manuscript for Sunshine Boulevard

This week I received the first edited manuscript for Sunshine Boulevard. My content editor, Karen McGrath, sent me her edited version of the ms done by using the Tracking option on Microsoft Word program. Oh, my goodness, but you should have seen the red boxes with deletions, insertions, and comments! Whoooo-eeeeeeeeee….Karen assured me this is what all authors have to go through and that mine was no worse than others.
Do you remember getting your red-inked English theme back from your sixth grade teacher? While that was a shock, opening up my ms file and seeing all the red boxes on the right side of the page with broken lines leading to the text took me back to those school years. Oh my.
When my heart slowed down and I could breathe again, I began reading through the ms. As I read, I noticed the flow of the story was smoother, the action was faster, a few words replaced several sentences. All of the things I love to do when I edit my writing. Hey, she made this script even better??
I now look at the trimmed down story as being on Word Watchers…a writer’s version of Weight Watchers.  I went over her changes and suggestions and added my own, then emailed the file back to her.
I did not realize that after turning in a ms I would be spending hours on revising it again. But I want to put out the best story for my readers and I appreciate Karen working with me to do that.  I am anxious to see what she sends back to me for the second edit and to learn about the process that Muse It Up Publishing uses to finish the ms in order to give the reader the very best reading experience.
Stay tuned. I’ll probably be whining again about the editing!!