The Editing Blues

Yes, I have them: the editing blues. Or rather, I have the "I wish my husband, who I asked to read my draft, would just get to it already" blues. He's buried in work, but that's nothing new.

The real trouble is, at the moment all I want is for someone to read the WiP and catch the typos and stupid word-switch errors I'm prone to. Like writing "many" when I mean "main." Or "sure" instead of "such." The problem with these kinds of errors is my eyes just whiz right over them when I'm revising.

And of course I don't have to have it done right away. But it's like an OCD thing. I think about it. I worry about it. I have to wash my hands over and over until it's dealt with.

I'm not ready, at this point, for an in depth beta-reading. It's too early to start obsessing over phrasing or word choice: I'm in first-draft sprint mode, as much as that's possible under the circumstances (with a baby who usually doesn't sleep longer than 45 minutes at a stretch--although today he's been down a while). So I don't want to beg an online writer friend to read it because I'm afraid they'll give me more feedback than I want right now/I don't want to use up favors too early on. I'm looking at you, Kathryn.

How about you? Do you feel compelled to deal with basic errors early on? Have you ever been stuck waiting for a loved one to do you a favor? What other sorts of writing or editing blues are you dealing with at the moment?

Establishing a Routine

So of course I shot myself in the foot yesterday by bragging on twitter that I'd finally gotten this elusive writing (and exercising) routine down. I could blame Jeff for staying up until 1am, at which time I woke up to find he wasn't in bed, and have not been able to go back to sleep since (he's snoozing away as I type). But truthfully, I'm up because I'm stressing over what will probably turn out to be a totally innocuous pregnancy symptom. I wish I could just get it checked right now, and then I'd be able to sleep. It's almost 4:30am, there is no way I'll be getting up at 7:30 to go swimming and then writing... unless I never manage to get to sleep at all, then I suppose I'll be up. But I think the first thing I'm going to do once it's a reasonable hour for such things is try to see my doctor. So tomorrow does not look good for the writing routine.

And to be precise I'm not writing so much as revising, and it's taking me a lot longer to do than I expected. Has that ever happened to you? You think you'll get the rest of it done tomorrow--meanwhile, four days later you still have a hundred pages to go? That's where I am. And it's just the first round of revisions. By the way, anyone want to beta this ms? I've gotten one person to do it, which was helpful, but I think I'd like someone else to do a complete read through as well as post it on the WSE forum chapter by chapter.