I had a brilliant meeting with my editor, well worth waiting for. We talked for hours - about my book! I didn't agree with all of her suggestions, but most, as usual, were spot on. It came down to restraining my tendency to spin off from the main storyline to pursue different characters up alluring byways and cul-de-sacs. (Note I refrained from calling them dead ends . . . my self control is becoming alarming!)Then it was back home and onto the keyboard to snip and reshape - I felt like a hairdresser.
The whole has now gone back to the editor who will subject it to microscopic examination for typos etc. It's frightening how easy it is to miss glaring blunders, as the MS inevitably alters through the writing process. So a character might finish lunch and then begin their morning's work, for example. I think my worst (which thankfully I spotted) was when I first sent the MS to my publisher, hoping to impress. Skimming quickly through it the night before, I noticed my detective reading through her notes on a meeting which took place 5 chapters later . . .
Changing names is another potential pitfall. Of course you can use the find and replace function, but you have to be careful to search for whole words only. In one of many now discarded extraneous subplots, I had a character named Ron. As I knew someone of that name, I decided to change it to Rob. The MS was peppered with words like wrobg, and strobg, crobe and drobe. All in a day's work!
