Recently I was doing the final pass on my forthcoming novel, The Pitcher. The book isn't out until September but this was my final edits. Maybe I would get another crack at it after copy editing but that is just a few tweaks. No. Now was the final pass and it was a bitch. Every word counts. All those rewrites and there were many count for nothing. There was always the I'll fix that next time. Next time was now here and so I could not kick the can down the road anymore.
And so here is where the difficulty comes. If every word now counts because this is how it will appear on the page then each sentence has to be as close to perfect as you can get. It is a nut cracking process and amazing. Amazing because so many bad sentences slipped through and the amount of overwriting was still amazing. I was still cutting like a butcher and this is the final pass! But it is because this is it that you have the guts to make those cuts that should have been made long ago.
But of course you don't see it until you see it. And now with the copy editor waiting this is the last stop of the good ship author input. So you make your stand. You do your best. And when you send it off and know that there will not be a second chance, you hope you got it all.
Of course you know you didn't.
Rocket Man...the rollicking story of a writer whose piece of the American Dream falls apart...Chicago Tribune
And so here is where the difficulty comes. If every word now counts because this is how it will appear on the page then each sentence has to be as close to perfect as you can get. It is a nut cracking process and amazing. Amazing because so many bad sentences slipped through and the amount of overwriting was still amazing. I was still cutting like a butcher and this is the final pass! But it is because this is it that you have the guts to make those cuts that should have been made long ago.
But of course you don't see it until you see it. And now with the copy editor waiting this is the last stop of the good ship author input. So you make your stand. You do your best. And when you send it off and know that there will not be a second chance, you hope you got it all.
Of course you know you didn't.
Rocket Man...the rollicking story of a writer whose piece of the American Dream falls apart...Chicago Tribune
