Editing the truth

If you don’t mind, I’m going to use my ACW post this month to have a whinge!

I dislike editing with a passion I can’t describe. I am in the middle of a long editing process, and I want to scream. I can’t stop and move on to something else, because I believe God has called me to write this book.

It’s all ACW’s fault you know... Oh yes! I think I've shared before about the 2017 Writers Day in London when I was challenged to go write what God has put in my heart. My worries about my ability were compared to Isaiah, in that I was coming up with all the reasons I could not do it. I was sent home to stop complaining and write the story I was given. (Yes Amy Robinson, I’m looking at you.)

I went home, threw the novel idea back in the drawer and started writing the book I didn’t want to write; the one about being fat.

This isn't my editor,
but I bet she feels like this
most of the time

So, now it is written, but guess what – it needs editing. And here’s how you know I’m committed to it. I’ve put my money where my mouth is and am paying an editor. Problem is, she keeps giving me homework. I’m paying the woman to make me work. She sends pages back to me with notes saying, “more here – tell me why you felt like that,” or “this whole section needs to be cleaned up and smoothed out.”

Arrgghhhhhhh…

It turns out that writing it was the easy bit. Now I have to go back over every sentence and make it right, explain more of what I was trying to say, reveal the bits I wasn’t ready to the first time around. Editing is hard work no matter the genre, but this is my truth, and I have literal skin and bone in the game. It’s a painful process.

Yet as I work on it, comment by comment, clarification by mortification, I can hear those words again… “Stop complaining and go write the story God has given you.” 

Thank you ACW, and thank you Amy. You're still spurring me on to get it done :)

I would appreciate your prayers guys. If I put my whining to one side, I firmly believe this book is from Him, and I'm sure it could help people. I need to keep working to get it to where it needs to be, so back to the dreaded editing I go. Unless you build the house Lord, I labour in vain. 

Annmarie Miles is from Dublin, Ireland. 
She lives with her husband Richard who is a pastor in the Eastern Valley of Gwent, in South Wales. She writes short stories, magazine articles, devotional pieces for Christian radio, and blogs about her faith at www.auntyamo.com Her first collection of short stories published in 2013, is called 'The Long & The Short of it' Her second collection, 'A Sense of the Sea and other stories,' was published in 2018. She is currently tearing her hair out editing a non-fiction book about being an overweight Christian called, 'Have mercy on me O Lord, a slimmer.'


photo credit: Sarah G... (115/365) Hard day, hard hat via photopin (license)