A New Reality

Everyone knows that when you write that you have to edit.  From the time we were in school, our teachers have had us at the table rewriting papers:  first draft, second draft and the final draft.  I had shared my first draft with a few closest friends and fed off their excitement. I wanted to launch my book right then and there, I was so excited.

However, I have a very patient but persistent editor.  I am glad I have listened. I have watched what was a fun story to write turn into a book I would want to own.  I can see the world, touch it, feel it and sometimes even smell it.  I know how people live and I know what motivates them.   It has a depth that I thought I had at the beginning, but now realize was nothing but a surface.

Alador has become as real to me as if he stood in the room. His insecurities of having been born an outcast, his fears of growing up,  the uncertainty that moving into adulthood brings for us all. These things swirl about him as he is forced to grow up.

Luthian as become more someone the reader will want to see fall.  His voice and even is manner is such that as a woman, I would never want to meet him and yet my fingers fly across the key board as he plots and schemes in his pursuit of conquest and magic.

Editing is not just about making a story have great grammar, the right spelling and the proper language.   It is about texture and reality.  It is about drawing the writer themselves so deep into the story that when they come up for air, it takes a moment to shake the story loose.  Lately, even when I am at other life tasks, I find my mind drifting back to the Great Isle.  I can feel the wind in my hair and the smell of sage brush on the air.  I can sigh at the mindless plodding of the korpen and the inability to make them hasten.  Editing, the making of a new reality.