Editors are a great luxury.

When I see what Bren and Lara did to The Dead Spend No Gold, it's enough to make me wonder why I'm so enamored of my first drafts.

I mean, about 90% of their suggestions for improvements are right on, and the 10% I don't like is probably my fault.

I have to remember, I wrote the original words that are being shuffled around, I came up the ideas, the characters, the story and plot, the pacing, and all that.

Anyway, the editors are a great help, the kind of help I've always wanted... and thought I needed.

Oh, I always felt I got the majority of the way there to a final book, but there was always the feeling that I didn't quite have it done.  I'd have the vague feeling it could be better.  But I'd fiddle and fiddle and not get any closer, sometimes even going backward.

I don't feel that way as much now that I'm getting a couple of edits and a couple of rewrites.  (Oh, there is always the feeling something can be better -- in all things, right?)

In my earlier career, I had little or no editing.

The publishers and agents?  Forget about it.

Friends and family?  At first, a little.  (Linda is absolutely wonderful about it.)

Volunteers?  Well, sure.  But when they found out how much work it was, it usually fell through.  Not always, but mostly.  Even when they were willing, I'd feel like I was imposing after awhile.

I hired my mentor, Dwight Newton, to help me edit Deviltree way back when.   (How I don't know -- because I certainly had no money...)  I remember liking my own version more.

I think I'm much more open to changes now.  Much less defensive.

The upshot is that I suppose I should be thankful that I didn't take up my writing career again until now.  I don't need to write for the money.  Oh, I want to be professional.  I want the validation, and money would be nice.  But I don't have to have it to continue.

In some ways, since my desire to write is as great or greater than it has ever been, I may have dodged a bullet not picking up the gauntlet earlier.

I feel free to write what I want, when I want.

And I can hire editors.

Both editors are very reasonable in their costs.  I think they are doing it as much out of friendship and curiosity and just being involved in the writing game as anything.  But still...it is an expense I couldn't have done before.

I see it as an investment -- which may just turn into "hobby" expenses -- and in either case, the amount of money I'm spending isn't going to break me.

I want these books to be as good as possible without tipping over into obsessive/compulsive.  Which I can do.  I can also be intellectually lazy.  So I'm trying to find the proper balance.

Not to mention the copy-editing.  Amazing how a manuscript can be read by multiple people and still miss a simple typo.  

Anyway, I think these books are turning out better than I could have ever expected and much of that is due to having some outside -- objective -- help.

So thanks to Linda, and Lara, and Bren.  And earlier, out of kindness, Martha and Dave and Wes ... I'm going to forget people here...but thanks to all.