Well … almost.

So, last January, I wrote Little White Lies in about 50 days. I LOVED the story. Edited it 10x over and sent it out. It was rejected 100%, but I did get one partial request out of it and some good feedback from a contest (no win or placement, but encouraging none the less).

Anyway, after 8000 (okay, not really 8000) but after so many edits and new stories, I left that one sitting in my files. Well, when I came up with my other persona, the story I came up with tied in with Little White Lies, so I decided to pull it out, dust it off and edit it. If nothing else, I’d get a look at my writing from *almost* a year ago.

And I have!

First, I see that I’m consistent with lots of stuff I continue to say in my critiques of others’ works, even though I was ‘fairly’ new to writing at the time (not my first novel, but not my 10th either).

Second, I see the errors I hate to make now. Like using ‘now’ when I’m writing past tense. Or ‘these’ or ‘this’. Egad! I did that! Thank goodness it wasn’t published!

So what does that mean now? It means, now that I know what to look for, editing is a ‘breeze’. 🙂 I’ve changed the entire opener, but once past Ch. 4 it’s all just grammar edits. I find I’m cutting a lot — mostly sentences I once considered that I HAD to have, I’ve cut as they pulled me from the story and failed to keep me engaged and engrossed.

Amazing what a little time away will do.

It’s hard to do that when you are in the midst of writing. Those more experienced will say ‘write it, edit it and let it sit’. But what do we do? We write. We edit. We send out. 6 months later, we look at the story and go … ooh! If only I’d edited *that*, maybe an agent would have picked it up.

Maybe. Maybe not. But time gives perspective and I look at this ‘old’ story and go … I love it just as much as before, but now it’s significantly better!

So, my advice? Eat a patience pill. It’ll do you a lot of good. 😉