A. Marie Silver

A. Marie Silver

Misadventures in Editing: The Case of the Fried Brains.

Ever wondered what a writer goes through when editing a work-in-progress?  Here’s your chance to find out.  Take a look at some of the conversations I’ve had with my characters while editing my current novel. If you’ve ever had something like this happen to you, please tell me in the comments.

“Don’t just sit there on Facebook all night,” Amethyst moaned. “Type something! Please! We’ve been trapped in this unfinished manuscript for years!”

“What are you doing?” Celeste rushed over to Amethyst. At least, I think that’s  what she did.  I was a little too enthralled with this article I found on Facebook about the Willa Wonka cast reunion to pay attention. “Don’t yell at her,” Celeste shushed.  “Writers are like groundhogs.  If you yell at them, you’ll scare them away and it could be years before they touch their manuscripts again.”

Blah, blah, blah. My characters are complaining again. Blah, blah, blah…ooh! That recipe looks yummy! I’m sooo pinning it!

“Great!” Amethyst slapped herself in the forehead. “Now she’s on Pinterest.  Pack it up, everyone! Our story isn’t moving forward tonight.”

The door to the conference room opened. “Hi everyone! Sorry I’m late.” A young girl bounced into the room with this annoying smile on her face.  I didn’t have to look up from my computer to know her smile was annoying. I knew because I wrote it that way.

“Who are you?” Amethyst asked, eyeing the young girl.

“Agnes,” she said.  “Who are you?”

“Hold that thought.” Amethyst held her hand up to silence the girl.  “Who’s Agnes?” she whispered to Celeste.  “There’s no Agnes in this book.”

“I think I end up hiring her at some point,” Celeste whispered back.

Oh for the love of porn-spammers! Is it too much to ask for a little quiet time? “Agnes,” I called. “You’re in the wrong book. Come back next year….or the year after.”

Agnes pouted.  “Well that sucks,” she said. “I had my camera crew all set to go.”

“You have a camera crew?” Amethyst asked. “For what?”

“It’s for my college application,” Agnes began. “I’m conducting a study on alleged psychics and how they’re actually not psychic but instead suffering from some kind of delusion. I’m recording all of my interviews and submitting them as a documentary essay.”

“Ooh!” Amethyst exclaimed. “Now there’s some action I good get in on.”

“There’s just one problem with that.” Celeste said.

“What?” Amethyst asked.

“You’re not crazy,” I said. “You’re psychic. Now if you guys don’t mind, I’m knee-deep in recipes and home improvement projects I’ll never actually do anything with.  Take the night off and leave me to my pinning.”

“Come on girls,” Celeste said. “Let’s go check on Mrs. Simmons and see if she needs her invisible dog walked.”

“Huh?” Agnes said.

“Don’t ask,” Amethyst responded.

3 Responses

  1. A great, funny story – thanks for sharing. I have to admit that I’ve had some similar thoughts, but not written them in my novel – maybe in a short story that ended up in the Word folder as an idea never to see the light of day.

Leave a Reply

POPULAR POSTS
ABOUT ME
A. Marie Smith

Your short bio telling the story of why you are a writer and the things that you think are important.