When I’m Famous
When I’m famous and an interviewer asks me how many edits it took to get my book ‘ready’, I think I will have to lie. I have seriously lost count of how many times I have edited this one piece that I am working on right now. It was a panster plot which means that I have had to go back and do a lot tweaking bits here and there, adding things in, making sure my themes are carried all the way through; all that sort of stuff.
So, here I am in what is likely to be an edit in the 40s. Then again, how do you even count what is an ‘edit’? Is it when you go in and change one sentence or each time you go through the whole manuscript from top to bottom? Either way, I’ve lost track. If you look in my documents folder on my computer you will see the names of the different versions of this piece evolve from the original working title and its version numbers on to the next working title and its version numbers on to the system I currently have. And let me tell you, this system is not without its flaws! I have about ten or more versions of ‘final’, ‘final with italics’, ‘final American spelling’, ‘really final’, ‘completed’, ‘tweaking’, ’almost done’, ‘edits’, finalbackup’… Seriously, I could go on. It has simply gotten out of control. I have finally dumped all the old versions into their own folder so I won’t get confused and start working on the wrong version. Could imagine what a mess that would create? My head hurts just thinking about it (not including my eye–which already hurts due to a hairspray incident which I will not get into).
