Greetings, Loyal Reader!

My line-by-line edit of Jason Cosmo: Hero Wanted continues. I’m camped out at a local coffee shop with the manuscript, a pen, and a latte.

Editing is slow going, as I said before. But I enjoy it. Particularly after writing and rewriting the book on the computer it is refreshing to read the text on paper. I’m seeing things I never saw before — from the occasional missing punctuation mark, to bits of clunky prose, to missed opportunities to wedge in one more joke. As much as I love the creative aspect of writing and letting the story go where it will, I have to say the polishing and fine-tuning is just as much fun.

Typically, trying to be the editor of your own work is not a good idea. Or so I’m told. In this instance, I think it is working, for several reasons. First, 90% of the book was professionally edited in its first incarnation, for the 1989 edition of Jason Cosmo. Second, I completed the principal writing of the revised text several years ago, so there is sufficient distance between my work as Author writing the book and my current task as Editor editing. Third, like a modern Mac on which you can run both the Apple OS and Microsoft Windows if so inclined, I am by temperament adept at switching between left brain and right brain, creative and analytic. I’m quite willing to club my own writing to death if  I don’t think it works. There is already blood–or ink, at least–on the floor and I’m only on chapter three.

Best regards,

Dan McGirt