The State of Farro

Editing sucks.

So instead of supplying you, my readers, with some steady stream of witticism, I going to vent about editing Farro instead. Poor you, lucky me.

This wouldn't be nearly so bad if it was more than just me and my husband working on it. It wouldn't be half so hard, or boring, or daunting a task. I have written the story, edited it once, rewritten once, and now find myself editing it again. How I would have loved to have had another person take some of the work load. Say, an editor? I have read every chapter nearly half a dozen times, if not more. (I think I've editing the first chapter over a dozen times by now). This final read through is the worst though. I'm not catching errors as well as I would be if I were looking at it fresh. Worst of all, my husband, who has read it nearly as many times as I, is starting to miss them too. Case-and-point, a conversation between us yesterday concerning a chapter he'd just edited and I was now looking over:

"Kyle! There was tense confusion here!"

"What where?"

"Here, between typo A and typo B!"

"What? How could I have missed that?"

[frowns all around]

I love my husband acutely, he's a wonder with words. He's an unrivaled speller, a walking thesuarus, an opinionated sytlist, but he's not particularly good with punctuation. He's, frankly, rubbish. And his commas? Oh, his commas.

"Kyle! I found a comma splice in [chapter he had just edited], be careful about those!"

"What's a comma splice?"

"..." Awkward silence. "That's okay, I'll handle the commas."

[Ten minutes later]

"Kyle? Why are there a whole bunch of added commas in this bit?"

"Because I felt there needed to be commas."

"Too many commas!" [undo, undo, undo]

He errs on the side of more commas, and when I discovered that, about four chapters in, I told him to leave the punctuation to me. I may be only okay with it, but that's better than extra commas. I hate extra commas. I suffer from over-commating things. Must. Break. Habit.

Damn punctuation.

So I finished Farro's rewrite two weeks ago and how many chapters have I finished in that time? Five. Just five. I'm settling into panic mode just about now. I need to pick up the pace if I'm going to make my deadline, and I have to make my deadline.

To myself I say: "Pick up the pace, Arreana. Finish Farro, publish Farro, beginning writing Sulfur, move on to something new!"

To any readers out there I say: "Thanks for letting me whine! I feel 80% better!"