I have spent the last few days not working as I wanted to, but doing the endless and what appears to be futile promotion. Things that worked in the past are not garnering so much payoff now and I believe it is because we are inundated with new releases. There is now an enormous choice of books and the reading world has become a confusing place with every man and his dog now able to publish their visions.
I posted a few chapters of The Immaculate Adventures of One Florian Ribeni on Wattpad and Tumblr and from there I am searching for other like blogs. I discovered I can put a Shelfari widget up but it caused me so much trouble I decided to just drop it here. At least it is someplace on the site and far better than eating turnips.
Editing is the gremlin that shows not only your mistakes but where content and polish are required. Editing is called polishing for good reason as you have to do it more than once to get a finished product. When I finish a work I will do a first edit right away as I usually have a list of things that was made during the creation process. These are ideas, comments, additions that I want to use to enhance the story. With one foot still in the creation phase I find this edit to be interesting and easy. It’s after this the work needs to be put aside. 
The problem with hope is that it is a balancing act between despair and joy. As I send partials out to agents I find myself maintaining only a cautious optimism as a partial is only a tiny step up the ladder. If that manages to pass muster then there is the full–agents often like a partial and reject a full as it may not fill the expectation the partial creates. And if you manage the joy of joys and get an agent then you are struggling with rejection of publishers. There are people who live charmed lives, that get agents easily and then published without too much drama and then there are the rest of us. 
When I finished my first three books I allowed myself a pat on the back for the achievement. Then they had to rest. I find that if I start editing right away my mind starts filling in the blanks and I don’t notice the problems. Many seasoned authors offered the advice of leaving it to sit before attempting an edit. So I did just that and this became the first part of the wait. Of course I used the time constructively and outlined several other books that had been simmering away but I kept away from the fantasy genre. A few weeks later I did the first big rewrite of the Elf. I was surprised at how much needed to be tidied. The entire series had been written at once and it had been a difficult task writing across three viewpoints at the same time. This meant ensuring consistency in timing and character development and unfortunately my mind kept filling in the holes. It took moving away from the project and separating it into single books so I could see any issues. I also discovered that the first rewrite was not one of two or three but more like seven or eight. So the long dark wait began. Edit, then put down and work on something else, in this case a Mr. Smith. Another week, another edit. Finally I showed the result to Tom who promptly said–do it again. He was right, I didn’t want him to be but once I took his comments on board I realised that if the reader is not happy with a character then I need to fix the character, not the reader. Several edits later I finally had something to show to an agent.
