Tidbit: Editing

For me, editing is like taking a trip to Happy Town. I love cutting redundant words. Stabbing adverbs in the eyeballs and flicking them into the gutter. Buffing up a secondary character's nails while spit-shining the opening scene. Editing isn't work at all. I could do it all day.

Which is a problem for my family.

Personally, I don't see what's wrong with eating leftovers for meals on end. Wait a minute. That might be the problem. I haven't cooked anything for the past week. Hmm. Note to self: stop editing for 15 minutes, run down to the corner store and grab some Tombstones. There. Problem solved.

**settles into big butt chair, laptop fully charged, brain in the editing zone, then spazzes when shrieky voice of Miss Nineteen hollers from the bathroom**

"Mom! There's no toilet paper in here!"

Grr. Guess I should've picked up some paper goods on my pizza run. Why is the world around me such a gaping sucky hole of neediness?

And that, my friends, is exactly how I feel when I sit down with a finished manuscript to read through it from beginning to end. Do you ever wish life had a pause button?