Today, we edit.

The second chunk of edits for the first half of “Black Dogs” has landed in my lap, and now I get to go through and scrutinize the gap left by each removed comma.

This is good and vital and required work, and needs to be done, and of course the editor can’t just change it without letting me know, because that way lies madness and angry writers squealing about their arbitrarily butched prose. And yet, I am boggled at the amount of work that went into editing this thing, the careful comments in the virtual borders, and daunted by the mountain of what I am required to approve or justify or fix in some fashion. I mean, my editor worked on this! Like, hard! And thought about it! A lot more than I did at the time!

And it’s exhausting. I am told it’s not just me, that several other writers of my acquaintence find it equally wearing, and here I am, on page 13 of 171, and I feel like I’ve been running in place for half an hour. And I’m just reading and nodding dumbly and occasionally writing a sentence. And it was my story to begin with! I still bear it the affection of an owner for a beloved, but retarded pet. How did my editor DO all this?!

There’s…just…so much of it…

Oh, well, once more into the breach…!

Edit: Somehow, playing the Best of Gilbert and Sullivan in the background just catapults this to a whole new level of surreal…