A Little Christmas Faith: My second round of edits have left the building!
Okay, technically they’re still on my computer, but I was going for dramatic effect. The question I can see you’re itching to ask, is what on earth am I doing when I tell my family ‘I’ve been editing today.’
Well, there’s a high chance I’ve been sorting the washing out, making the tea, arranging a car to be serviced/repaired (yes, it’s been happening a lot recently). Making myself the odd cup of tea.
But that’s not what you’re interested in, is it? (and yes, you are interested in my editing. Just grit your teeth and read on).
First, a reminder of A Little Christmas Faith.
It’s the story of Faith (see what we did there?!) the owner of a new boutique hotel in the Lake District, and her first guest, Adam Hunter. Faith, you might remember, is excited to be opening her hotel a few weeks before Christmas. Adam, on the other hand, has come to the hotel to escape Christmas…
Here are some examples of changes I had to make during the first round of editing:
- Slow the romance down a bit. Not too much mind you, as Adam is only booked into Faith’s new hotel for 10 days. But this is fiction, so that’s plenty of time for ‘things’ to happen. Or not. (come on, I’m not going to give away too much here. I’m trying to pique your interest so you’ll buy the book).
- Add a bit more background to Faith’s romantic past.
- Provide a few flashbacks to help you, dear reader, understand why Adam has checked into The Old Mill Hotel to escape Christmas.
- Stop Adam’s best friend and business partner, doing a disappearing act in the middle of the book. Oh and the same goes for Nip and Tuck (you’ll have to read the book to find out who they are!).
And here are some from the second round:
- Address the issue of Faith having her rooms in the upstairs of the hotel, yet she has a backdoor into a garden (oops…!)
- Modernise some of my language. In my head I might have become Faith, my twenty seven year old heroine, but alas in reality, I’m old and dated. As are some of the words I use…
- Make sure some of my secondary characters don’t change their names half way through the book (oops again).
- When Faith is wearing a dress, don’t let Adam later undo the buttons of her blouse (oops yet again).
- Provide a realistic reason why one of my characters is in a certain place, at a certain time. And not just because it’s convenient for my storyline.
- Generally tighten my writing up and make it ‘better’ (which sadly also involves making a lot of changes, reading them, then reverting back to the original because ‘better’ is very hard to judge).
One more round to go, when I hope to pick up all those pesky mistakes that I know are lurking in there somewhere, but they’re very hard to see when you’ve read the manuscript as many times as I have.
Worse, I know if my editor and I don’t find them, you will!