I’m just under half of the way through my reading, and gave up on resisting the red-pen last night. (I’m reading on a print-out to keep me from making, erm, impulsive changes that would make following reader/editing marks harder.)

But *MAN* this is humbling.

I remember Georgiana talking about finding overused phrases in her final read-through and I have *certainly * found mine.

Mainly a bunch of head-tilting and vomit. Isn’t that lovely.  The head-tilting was initially (along with casually looking at the sun) meant to be a subtle marker of djinness. (I had visualized a bird-like sort of movement) but it spilled to other characters and is (yet) another thing to be fixed.

Jay was right to make me send it off before I read it myself– since his goal was to see it done/fixed rather than spending another six months on another run-through.  His/my hope is that multiple eyes will abbreviate this stage and move things along quicker.

But having read this much I know I’m not giving out any more copies until certain things are cleaned up.

Of course, there are things I’m waiting for advice on before I’ll be sure how to clean them (which is another argument for exposing it to the outside world).

For example, it was apparent before the end of Scene Two that a disproportionate amount of my fantasy world is calm and/or analytical.

Some writers populate their worlds with dragons and nymphomaniacs.  I have the observant and reasonable.  My experience tells me there’s a greater tolerance (not to mention interest) for the former than the latter.

I haven’t gone back to the beginning to red-pen it, preferring at this point to simply make lists of Find words that will flag the passages I need to rework.

Each of the many imperfections still makes my toes curl, but at the same time it’s been delightful taking my work in as a unit, riding the story as a story rather than rebar and scaffolding.

And that may be a sign I haven’t done enough work on it: I’m not tired of it yet.