EDIT is a four letter word

There's only one possible topic for my blog this time - edit. Even though I've just finished my ninth (THE LITTLE B&B AT COVE END - HARPER-COLLINS)and this one was nowhere near as scary as my first it's still about as much fun as cleaning drains - it has to be done whether we like it or not. I had a deadline for this one ... and just under five weeks to get there. So plenty of time. Of course, I wasted time getting started as per usual. Edit, in case no one has ever thought of it, is an anagram of diet, tide, and tied. I waste a lot of time like that getting started. So, I'll take the word 'diet' .... an edit, for me, is quite a tool to diet because once I get started I often let lunchtime come and go, and just grab a quick something for supper - result in the diet department. As for 'tide', well, this book is set in a coastal village and with boats going in and out and beaches appearing and disappearing I had to check tide times. And then there was the 'tied' bit when I'd wasted so much time - because I had plenty of it anyway, didn't I? - and had accept I was now tied to my desk and had to refuse invites to coffee and lunch to get it finished. This time around it was suggested another thread to the story would be good ... something else for my heroine to unravel before she gets her man. A sub--plot of sorts.It was by no means obligatory but 'do give it some thought, Linda'. So I did. And I put one in, which meant other things had to be taken out to stop the word count from rocketing. Add to all that the usual things we have to do on an edit - checking timings for a start. I'm not good at those. I know it's Monday, or Sunday or a week later, but my reader doesn't - and that first reader was my editor so .... that had to be sorted. And then, of course, there are the double and triple checks we all have to do to make sure that eye/hair colour hasn't changed between page one and three hundred and one.

And shoe size - yes, I've done that. I had my hero in size nines at the beginning and then because ... well, we all know the connection between a man's shoe size and the size of a certain part of his anatomy ... he was getting sexier by the page. By the time he got to the end he was in size elevens.

There have been times when I've been doing all this when I've wondered whose book this is which is, perhaps, ungracious of me because I know my book will be much improved by the time I get to the end. I'm almost there on this one ... the structural edit is done, eye/hair colour, shoe size,et al have been checked and triple checked. Then comes the scary bit, sending back out there into the ether. Wish me luck!