Tidbit Thursday: Editing

Most often I love editing. I'm at that stage in the writing game now where I get to play around with words already typed in my cozy mystery manuscript. Mostly, I love it.

Mostly.

The hardest part about editing is when one of your critique partners calls your writing onto the carpet, then belly slams it like a sumo wrestler, knocking the wind out of you. Sometimes that's hard to take.

But even worse is the sickening feeling that you know your critter is correct.

Case in point: there is romance intertwined with my mystery, and there's one chapter in particular where the romance takes center stage. Should it? It's a mystery, after all, not a freaking Fabio-covered bodice ripper.

The thing is, though, that this romantic thread involves the detective in a big way, so yes, it is essential to the story, as is the character building garden scene where love blossoms. But (and I've always got a big but) doggone it, my critiquer is correct. As important as this chapter is, it outshines the mystery. What to do?

Easy part - slash and burn all the nonessential prose in the love department. Tighten that scene up so that it'll look fantastic in some Spandex.

Hard part - intersperse in that garden romance a new scene, written from the perspective of the two women in the kitchen who are the snoopers trying to solve the mystery. The trick is getting the additional new part to flow seamlessly with what's already there.

Oh yeah, and did I mention I need to have the entire manuscript polished by this weekend to ship off to a prospective publisher that requested it?

Then just for fun toss in that I'm moving out my 92 year old mom into a senior housing unit this Saturday? And my daughter is getting married in 38 days?

Writing isn't for the weak of heart.