Magical World of “Edits are Done”

Every time I repeat the phrase, “Edits are done,” I feel like I’ve stepped into a magical world. I’ve said this time after time, revision after revision, but there’s always been an unstated, “Until someone tells me I have to rewrite again.” The fact that this time it’s final (or as final as it gets before everyone has print copies in their hands) isn’t just an alternate reality.

This is straight-up magic.

It bends the laws that have governed my world since 2007, when I started revisions. Clearly, I have left the real world. This book really is going to be Done. Not next year. Not “sometime.”

August 28.

Then I can wholeheartedly move on to all the stories that had my heart in 2007, all the ones I spent all this time laying the foundation for. If I were traditionally publishing, a note of fear would chime in here, saying, “They’ll kill your project when it’s not good enough. They’ll tell you to move on, maybe now, and you have only one other heart-idea.”

But that’s not my reality, either. Now, the worst that will happen (and it will happen repeatedly) is that someone will tell me it’s not financially viable to continue the series.

I’ll be able to laugh at the series death spiral.

My writing doesn’t have to be financially viable. I can keep my day job if I have to. It’s a good place to be. And I can write book 11 for the last five people who want to experience it with me.

Maybe I won’t ever get there. Maybe I’ll find other heart-stories and get sidetracked. That decision will be in my hands. For once, the floor has dropped out from beneath my fear, and…

I’m back in the present, knowing that everyone else gets to start this wild ride with me at last.