Warning – Editing is bad for Keyboard Circuitry

Today, I'm pleased to welcome an #EditFoster client to the blog, Danielle K Girl, talking about how it felt to receive her edits!
​

A week before I moved from Australia to the USA, I received feedback on my first professionally edited manuscript.

Scary bloody stuff. 

And I did what any author striving to improve herself would do. I put it away and didn't look at it for another week. Moving country is a pretty good excuse, right? But there came a point when I could avoid it no longer...

Time to open up that laptop, find myself a little spot in the corner of the AirBnB that is currently home, and find out what one or two minor things my manuscript needs in order to become an instant bestseller.

Yes, dear invisible friends inside my head, I am going to read through the editorial report I received the day before flying out of Australia. I'm totes ready for it. I mean seriously, what could a professional editor have to say about what is clearly a piece of writing brilliance? Poor girl probably feels bad I'm paying her at all.

​Open document. Bring it on.

Righto.

Well, that's quite a lot of notes.

I didn't realise you could fit quite so many comments into a word document.

I think there is a record up for grabs here, how many times  I can be told to 'show don't tell'

Look at all those mark-ups.

All those spelling errors.

And mark-ups.

So many mark-ups.

Wait, hang on. Sorry, Bill Murray is trying to tell me something, give me a minute. What's that Bill?

​Why yes, yes I do. Thanks for your input.

Remain calm. Totally calm. Do not fling laptop in stranger's house. Remain totally calm. So, it turns out you can't write for shit. That's okay. Dreams are overrated. As is self-esteem.

No one needs either of those things. Nope. Certainly not me.

Sweet mother of god, failure burns! It stings my eyes. These aren't tears, they are stinging beads of faily-fail-fail juice running down my face. Stop looking at me!

I so don't got this.

In fairness, I was warned by fellow writing buddies, editing is gonna sting like a mofo. They weren't friggin kidding.  I can't even see my keyboard anymore the fail-fail juice is flowing so bad...gjomb...ghoohoa...
​
Fellow writing buds also said, "Read it, put it away, feel sorry for yourself, and then give it a few days." Okay. Sure, yep. No worries.

Now what? I ain't opening that thing again. No god damn way. Besides, the fail-fail juice overflow short circuited my keyboard. Can't type A or E, or more importantly, download gifs.  No point going on. There are other dreams anyway. Walmart's hiring at the moment. I'm sure there's something I can do there.
​
Putting words together is totes overrated....but I really like putting words together. It's my precious......I wants it....

And now I've spilled my wine. Right. Officially it cannot get any worse.

So screw you, Bill Murray. I'm going back in. Back to mark-up hell. This time I'm wearing goggles. I want to see what I paid for. Maybe those notes didn't actually say "give up you're useless." In hindsight it might have been more like "this is on the right track for submission" and that my fight scenes were awesome and it was a "unique story."
​
Maybe. The juice blinded me. Now shove over Bill. Do something useful and pass me a fresh glass of wine and a hairdryer, I need to dry out this keyboard.
​

Danielle K Girl is an Aussie who recently moved from Melbourne, Australia to Lititz, Pennsylvania - a town she’s convinced is actually Gilmore Girls’ Stars Hollow. She chose Girl as her pen name because she got tired of reading about female authors having to hide their gender. She adores animals, loves peanut butter pie and wishes her car was a Transformer. 

​Her first independently published book ExtraOrdinary, a YA scifi, was released in December 2016. Work on the second book in the series, ExtraLimital,  is currently underway. She is also working on a adult sci-fi series based on a Sumerian myth and crammed with as much bio-tech and as many aliens, witches and gods she can fit on the page. 
Twitter - @DanielleKGirl

Website - http://daniellekgirl.com/ 

Instagram - daniellekgirl

Tumblr - dankgirl.tumblr.com

---