Last night, I put my novel on sale at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo.  It was the completion of a four to five week process that started with a break up, and hopefully finishes with me becoming a best selling author.  (Ha!  In my dreams!)

One of the things I knew had to happen to my book before I published it was editing, because I have a tendency to switch tense and drop entire words out of sentences.  Self editing NEVER catches those kind of things, because I always knew what I was saying in my head.

So, I posted on here, and on facebook, about needing an editor for my novel.  I couldn’t pay them, but I could make sure their name was in the liner notes.  I got a couple bites, and began sharing my google doc to those who said they could help.

So the edits started… they came pouring in, and by Wednesday, I was practically ready to scrap the novel and start again.  You see, I had already ran through it for content multiple times, so almost every edit was:

“You forgot a word here.”

“Is this really the word you want to use?”

“Your tense in messed up.”

Every day I would log in to my email and find another batch of 40 or so edits to my novel, and I was starting to think that I was the most horrible writer in the history of writers.  In fact, yesterday morning, I almost unshared my document completely and scrapped the book.  Sure, I had already created the website and pimped it on twitter, but I couldn’t take another little ego blow like the comment box which was screaming at me, “You are horrible at this, why do you think you can even write a novel maggot?!”  (FYI – the comment box has a drill Sargent type voice.)

And it’s not like some miracle occurred where this feeling went away either.  Instead, I got an email from one of my editors, Terry, who said he was complete.  He was done.  He had finished.   All I had to do was make it through the last chapters of edits and my book would be complete, and finished.   When I finally reached the final edit, which required a total rewrite of the last paragraph of the book, I was shocked.  I had survived my first editing process.  The hell of being told the million tiny ways you suck was over.

Last night, I read through the final copy.  It was smoother, had less errors, and I knew that all the editing was worth it.  But man – it sucked.

I’ve submitted my novel to Barnes and Noble, Amazon and Kobo.  It will be available on Monday, October 15th exactly like I planned.   Now it’s onto the next book in the series.   Thank god you have writing time before you have to get edited again.

Have you ever had a novel edited?  How did you make it through the process?