Right. So … editing, okay … been at this for a solid week and I’m only at chapter 7. Sigh. Well, nobody said it would be easy, right?

What I am enjoying, beyond fixing the grammar gremlins and all the red and green underlined bits and shouting at MS Word because dammit, sometimes a fragment is lyrical, beautiful, and poetic and not … without argument, or alternative: wrong. It’s emphasis. It’s panache … it’s oh sod it, I’m tired, I’ll just use a comma then, are you happy now?

I’m enjoying fixing some of the factual issues, doing some in depth research and addressing some of those holes or ‘x’s’ as I left them in the text which I believed I would come back and mark knowledgeably later  …  incidentally, this did work according to plan as it actually is easier to do this after you have written the first draft, (though I do think it would need to be a case by case thing) as before you start writing you can go down a research rabbit hole that you may never dig yourself out of … as I found to my detriment when I started researching how a vineyard was run midway through writing the book, and got horribly stuck with trying to figure out if my vineyard really was organic … slow-forward two weeks and the agonies of no sleep and no writing and coming up with the X factor plan.

And then there’s the other things … like the character that popped up in chapter 3 & 4 and then was never to be seen again … out you go … and like I said I’m only at the first edit, and only at chapter 7 …  after a solid week.

Still editing … is fun. Now that I have discovered Berocca. It’s like finally painting after you’ve plastered the hell out of your walls.

Commas, though, are a drag and a mixed-blessing bag. I can’t remember who said that he spent all day writing and putting them in and all afternoon taking them out, but it’s a sentiment for which, I can relate. The well-timed, well positioned comma, can add, elucidate, and enhance. The bad one can irritate, enrage, and obfuscate. And therein lies, the rub.

Or the back space key, at least. Incidentally … the latter is the one fault that I do lament in my MacBook. Which just goes to show, that even Steve Jobs, let form get in the way of function at times. A lesson for us all.

Uncategorized A Greek Vintage Book editing Finished book grammar writing