I’ve really begun…finally…to do the edits I’ve been putting off for so long on my one and only manuscript. And it is bad.

Really bad.

Embarrassingly bad. I’ve got passive verbs, passive sentences, passive paragraphs and passive chapters. Oh yes…it can be done, I say. And how in the world did I final in a contest? I guess by spending the last half year working on the first three chapters of my book. Ahhh, the stupidity of a novice.

Oh, I didn’t go ahead and edit my whole book like a good little writer would. No, I just kept working on those first few chapters, getting critiques, getting feedback, and cutting and pasting until I said enough already. I was ready to move on. It’s my first book, right? It is the “practice book”, right?

Because of the final, I am making myself edit on the slim chance I get the privilege of getting an editor to read through my book (yes, that’s the Big Prize for the ultimate winner). I’m digging in and doing some rewriting as I go through these edits. It’s going to take me longer than I expected, I’m afraid. I’ve got to make these passive things take an active stance. I’ve got to make the story come alive.

Have any of you written a scene that started out in the middle of a day and you recount what happened earlier? Why not start at the beginning and jump ahead a bit. It makes it ACTIVE instead of PASSIVE. Oh goodness, I have so much to learn.

So here I write about this writing journey. About how I’ve been negligent. About how I’ve been procrastinating this editing because I knew it would be painfully difficult. So there ya have it. My writing life today.