Shame. And edits.

I recently sold a short story to Ellora's Cave *sale!squee* and got my first round of edits from my lovely editor. One of the things that stuck out at me was the fact that she'd highlighted an enormous chunk of text right at the beginning of the story and left a comment to the effect of, "This could be cut. Save what's important and insert it into the rest of the story."

This was it. My first big editing change. Was I going to handle it like a champ, or like the whiny brat I'm always afraid I'm going to be, deep down?

I took a deep breath. I poured some coffee. I dicked around on Twitter. I browsed a couple of forums. Then I took another deep breath and started reading through the highlighted text, trying to decide what was important and what wasn't.

Then something strange happened. I'm a writer, right? Shouldn't every piece of my baby be important to me? And yet, as I read that text, I found myself thinking, "Holy crap, she's right. None of this is important!"

Turns out, I'd vomited at least a thousand extraneous words onto the page, right at the beginning of my story! HOW COULD I HAVE LET THIS HAPPEN? I do not know. I'm just grateful at least two people slogged through the first 1.5k to find the actual story after it. I got lucky. This time. I think I salvaged about three sentences worth of semi-vital information from that chunk of text and threw the rest out. Besides, who needs it when there are some love scenes that could stand to be expanded? I didn't find out whether or not I was a champ, because a champ has to be able to cut stuff she loves and not be a fair-weather author who immediately turns on her text at the first suggestion of imperfection, but I think I learned a few valuable lessons. #1: A good editor is worth her weight in gold. And #2: DON'T BE BORING.

Now I just need to apply that second lesson to my blog. OOH, BURN