My Life in Edits

E = Endless. Looking for that typo, that spelling error, that

comma instead of a semicolon amongst 90,000 words means no

matter how many times I look, I’m going to miss something!

D = Decisions. Is this a content error or a formatting error? Or

both? If I change it here I’ll have to change it everywhere else.

Does it really matter? Am I being too picky? If I don’t change it,

will it bother me later? Why doesn’t everyone love detailed

description like I do?

I = Imagination. C’mon, you can say it better. Smoother. More

cleverly. How many ways can I say the same thing? And after

staring at the same sentence for who-knows-how-long, am I

imagining it or are my quotation marks backward?

T = Tenacious. You read the manuscript once. Twice. Three

times. Read it again. And again. Look for errors. Typos.

Repetitions. Misspellings. Grammatical no-nos. Gaps in

dialogue, description and now in my head where my brain is

supposed to be.

S = Submit. You’re done! You’ve tackled every squiggle, word,

red-line and comment. Send it off, leave the computer to put

itself to sleep and go relax before you realized you’ve missed

that something that was first predicted here under the letter “E”.