I can remember that I went to a writing course in England situated beautiful in Shropshire. Learned a lot from both Claire Fuller and Andrew Tailor. At that moment I had only finished one novella (1-way ticket to Mars). I sure didn’t put much effort in refining it once ready. I removed typos and odd story lines, that beta-readers had found. That was it. That was because I thought the book was good. I really didn’t like the editing. Here comes in Claire, she told us during the lessons, that she liked editing better than the actual writing. Back then that sounded so strange to me. With writing, I thought, you are creating. Isn’t that the best thing that one can do when you are a writer?

With the current book at hand to edit, Driven by Gold, I do work in a different way. My workflow is different and now, I spend way more time on editing the book. More looking at the total picture and really trying to think about the easiness of reading it and if no errors are made with small things like in a paragraph writing one has a tea for a drink and, more or less, five sentences down the road, writing that the person put down his glass of wine. Obscure how a tea had become a wine? In a book it happens all to easy if you write with longer pause in between the writing. With that in mind I hear Claire state her love for editing. Claire, you’re right. Only ten the words, sentences, scenes, chapter form a book.

Back then I only half understood what Claire had dropped. Now I’m beginning to see it and more and more appreciate the editing.

Oh, true to mention that I’m halfway my first editing round. Maybe I think else once I’m in my 20th round :-).