It was kind of weird, to go back and read my own writing, and to realize that I couldn’t.
If you can do that, good for you. As for me, I honestly couldn’t.
Spelling, grammar and style, I can handle. But to go over a story with such a fine-toothed comb, and still see the bigger-picture stuff like pacing, plot and character development? Nope.
I’m pretty sure it’s free of typos now, so the second round of editing should be faster. This time, I want to just read through it, the way any other reader would. If I can.
I suppose there will always be the urge to tweak it, polish it, try to perfect it just a little bit more instead of letting the story tell itself. Like trying to walk through a garden, but always being tempted to pick the flowers up and move them somewhere else. But if I want to discover how it feels to read the book, so I can know that the pacing, flow and character development are what I want them to be, I’ll have to find a way to let go of that.
In the meantime, I have a question for everyone who read “My Fugitive”. What is the one thing you would most like to know about the Fugitive? If there was one thing you could discover about his mind, personality, motives or backstory, what would it be?
Leave your question in the comments, and I’ll see if I have an answer for you.