Unlike many of my writing friends, I enjoy editing. Mainly because I write the type of novels that I like to read, so it’s not painful to read through them many, many times. And I enjoy making things better, so improving a chapter, a paragraph, or a sentence is rewarding.
For years, I’ve done the fine-tuning editing while walking. After hip surgery in early May, I needed to use a walker, and then a cane, and then to pay strict attention to where I was stepping, so I’ve been editing in the mornings before my shower. Since I also needed to wait for my husband to be awake before I showered to ensure that I didn’t slip or to help with shampoo and soap in the very beginning, it gave me something to do while letting him sleep a bit longer.
I’m currently doing the ultimate (but it may well be the penultimate) pass on book four in my French series. Since I haven’t revised this novel in over six months, I’m able to delete some sentences that just don’t belong, such as French sayings that don’t sound quite right, or a reference to being in lockdown. It’s difficult to get the balance right so that a character sounds appropriately French without confusing non-French readers. I’ve gone back and forth on how much of real-life to include in my novels. In the case of mentioning lock-down, it was about an apartment in Spain that two characters were staying in. During 2020, people in Spain weren’t allowed out of their apartments except for very limited exercise or health requirements. Is that something a reader wants to be reminded of? Probably not. In fact, if someone wasn’t aware of this, the couple of sentences mentioning it would be confusing. This was easier to see with some distance from writing it. Which is why editing is so useful.