I have been doing some revisions lately on my contemporary romance that is coming out soon with Destiny Romance. (Have I mentioned that? I have? Oh, right-o. Moving on. ;) )

I’m done with them now and am back to working on my longer novel and have discovered something.  When your brain is in edit mode, trying to do a quick read of your current wip to get up to speed sucks like an enormous sucky thing.  All you can see is redundancies and clumsy sentences and things that need tweaking.

I have always edited as I go.  It’s how I roll.  I know people say you should just get it down and turn off the internal editor and come back and fix it later.  I can’t do it.  I can’t write any old rubbish, I have to make the sentences at least reasonable and I can’t leave the chapter until it makes sense.  My internal editor just rides along with me.

At least, that’s what I thought until now.  Now, having put myself in true editor mode (as opposed to self-editing writer mode) on my own work, I understand what people mean by needing to turn off the editor when writing.  It really is a different way of looking at the text.  It’s a different skill set.

I’ve always known that.  I’ve been an editor (of a magazine and non-fiction) and I’m quite good at it, but I’ve never edited fiction.  The process I’ve just been through with Rules are for Breaking (my romance title, do you like it?) is my first exposure to professional fiction editing and while I enjoyed it, mostly, I really now need to turn it off.  It can come back later – needs to in fact – but for now, I need to let that level of scrutiny go and concentrate on the story.

Yet another example of how in this business, as in so many others, you should never say never, or think you know how things are, because there’s always something more to learn!

But all of that is really an aside, because what I really wanted to do is tell you that I have a cover for Rules are for Breaking!  It’s due to be released as an ebook through Destiny Romance next month (there’s a blurb up on their site under ‘coming soon’) and I’m just a wee bit excited.  So, without further fanfare, here is my gorgeous cover.  What do you think?


Posted by in Imelda's updates, Wednesday Whatever, Work In Progress (WIP) Tags: , , , , , , ,