Love the insights into your writing process, Lynn. So now - did you do your own editing or have someone else help - what did you find as your best technique for editing - that added to the flow of your book.

I've not finished the last two chapters - had some company (my nephew - who needed my attention). I hope to finish by tomorrow.

Hi Dian and Unique and Everyone, glad you liked what I offered thus far as to the writing process. Unique, I'm sorry to hear you have to endure the ugliness of divorce. Hopefully he won't contest with your plans for distribution. I will continue with the editing process today (Sunday.) We are having such a blizzard! Even church services were cancelled. Fortunately my husband is off work today so I don't have to worry about him commuting. LLL

Hi Unique, I'm posting a portion of my book that illustrates leaving a "relationship" and the petty distribution of "things." Todd was the jerk I was "married" to, and Sally and George were friends helping me to get out. The part I wanted to get across was that I ended up with my SELF, and he ended up with nothing.***

Early on a Saturday morning, when Todd was expected to be working over-time, Sally and George planned to help me move. But Todd did not schedule overtime that weekend. Instead, he brought glazed doughnuts and coffee home after his graveyard shift, intending to share in pretend domestic bliss. Should I dare piss him off by packing right in front of his face? I started to pile my books in boxes.
Todd grew angrier with me as I wrapped and packed. “My heart is in my throat,” he said. “Where do you think you are going? Your heart is as f as ice. It’s colder than a witch’s tit.” Didn’t he already have another helpless victim to humiliate? As I was wrapping a baking dish in newspaper, he yelled, “You can’t take that. Put that pot back!”
“Give me a break! My mother gave me this baking dish.”
As we grappled over who bought what when, Todd grabbed my throat with one hand. He pushed me into a corner and aimed a fist with his other hand, about to break my nose. Staring at his knuckles, I wondered if this juncture was worth the whole journey. I took a deep breath. Todd passed on the punch when Sally and George arrived as planned, letting themselves in to help me pack.
“Do you want me to call the police?” George asked. “Do you want to press charges?”
Todd backed off. “She’s still my wife. Mind your own business.”
“Her safety is our business,” Sally said.
“So, now you need security guards?” Todd sneered. “Like I said, you can’t take care of yourself.”
“Hey, Todd, why don’t you and I talk outside?” George suggested.
“Why don’t you kiss my royal red ass?” Todd left in a huff. My friends and I stood looking at each other, realizing the close encounter with domestic violence.
“Let’s get moving,” Sally said.
We quickly loaded the boxes without taking time to wrap and pack. I was leaving with all that I needed, including a warm heart. As I left, I looked back into the apartment to see a vacant shell of a living room. Todd would come home to nothing to show for a life with his eighth wife. Rather than feeling free, I was feeling edgy, like a fugitive. Todd was a snake that slithered unseen through the grass or coiled under a rock until he was ready to strike.

There are a few books that changed my life. The Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series introduced me to reading. Mutiny on the Bounty and A Seperate Peace introduced me to more mature reading, as did the authors Kahlil Gibran and Hermann Hesse. The Muckrakers stirred my desire to be in a helping profession. Numerous self-help books stirred my psyche, and numerous spritually inclined books, such as A Return to Love stirred my soul. The two books that literally changed my life were read in the last decade: First, "The Artist's Way" and Second, "The Courage to Heal." Unique, all of Julia Cameron's books are now available via paperback. The Artist's Way is one to buy and keep. Someday, I wouldn't mind faciliated the Artist's Way course on the boomer site. LLL

I’ll try to offer some insights into the editing process. I will use the first two paragraphs of the book as examples, then I will tell you about the editors I paid. I was hung up on the first sentence for more than 20 years! Should I start with the word “It?” as in “It was the most rain…” The word “it” makes the sentence sound more passive, less powerful, so I went straight to the date. But in the first sentence, the era is set, the time of day, the location, and the weather. Weather is a theme throughout the book because it was important to my family for weather related resort business. I studied the writers’ reference books regarding grammar by Strunk to do my own grammar edits. I still wonder about the phrase, “flood of the century.” Some reference books on editing say that when the words call it or called it precede a phrase or a word, then the phrase should be in quotes. I used “Stay off the streets,” the announcer warned as a foreshadow because the stage I was setting is dark. The rest of the paragraph is fully memory and instinct, describing my emotional state exactly in contrast to what was supposed to be a cheery time of year. More suicides are attempted (and completed) around Christmas than any other time of year due to the pressures of being in a family like a Hallmark card or Maxwell House coffee commercial, and I wanted to depict that dreadful feeling. As for grammar, again, it is by way of studying the grammar reference books. By the time I’d hired the second editor, she said it was grammatically perfect, which was music to my grammar police ears!

***That night, December 20, 1978, the radio reported the most rain in Phoenix in one hundred years. Broadcasters called it the flood of the century. While I was driving, I listened to reports of accumulated rainfall and road closures. “Stay off the streets,” the announcer warned. The wet pavement reflected the colored holiday lights that adorned cactus. Seasonal garlands, heavy with the weight of rainwater, drooped to the gutters. Carols interrupted newscasts, followed by the countdown: “Only four shopping days left until Christmas.” I felt a pressure as intense as the rain that pounded on the windshield.

Should read: When the word "call" precede a sentence, word, or phrase, the resulting sentence, word, or phrase should have quotes. Sorry for the confusion. Are you more confused? I'd look it up exactly but my books are packed.

In the second paragraph, the reader learns about the main character: that the gender is female (bra) and that she engages in risky behavior (drinking and driving.) The editor of the first draft told me that it took too long for the reader to determine gender. She asked, “How can you introduce your gender?” and I came up with the bra. The reader also learns that the narrator takes risks with her health by smoking, even with a cold. Yet, she is afraid to risk being in the weather elements, thus setting the stage for a complicated character. Otherwise, the story is being told exactly as it happened, without much self-censor. I also like contrast, such as “warm currents” yet “shivering.” An editor told me not to put the same word, such as “warm” so close together, but I developed a style of using the same word in different ways just because I like words and all their various meanings.

***I sipped from the Michelob that rested between my legs, and then lit a cigarette. The cough of a nasty cold rattled my chest. As I passed gas stations and convenience stores, I could not decide whether or not to fill the empty gas tank. It was too dark to stop, too cold to get out, too wet to pump. My T-shirt and bra were soaked through to my skin, and the denim jacket and jeans provided no warmth. The heater vents blew warm currents of air, but I still shivered.***

Did you know Todd had been married that many times before you married him?

Now I will tell you about editors I hired, and how I found them. Please keep in mind that all the while I was full of doubt as to whether I should tell this story because it is so personal. However, like Dianne said, I had to continue to heed the urgings from within to get the story told. After I had collected vignettes, poems, memory fragments, and phrases and put them into the computer, I started word processing. I actually taught myself the word processing program by using a cassette tutorial. What fun! I love word processing! For discipline, I would tell myself that I would spend (for example) 4 hours putting paragraphs where they belonged. I would move a paragraph that was at the end of the text to the beginning, and vice versa, when appropriate, to get the some context of chronological order. Sometimes I got very confused, other times the movement made sense. But I spent hours and days moving sentences and paragraphs around. This was difficult, since the book just begins and reports to the reader in flash-backs. The suggestion to begin at the suicide attempt came from the counselor Karen, who told me, “Your story begins with you lying flat on your back in the hospital. That’s your rock bottom.” So I kept the questions in mind: How did I get there, and WHY. After months of word processing and grammar and spell checks, I found a freelance editor.

My husband and I sporadically attended Unity Church in Overland Park, KS. One Sunday, the church sponsored an event honoring authors who belonged to that church. There were 4, and after service the authors were selling/signing books. One of the authors was a poet named Wyatt Townley. She’d been on the platform that Sunday morning, telling the congregation not to “be afraid” of poetry. Overland Park was not exactly an “artsy” community. Well, I decided to buy her book of poetry, and at her setting was a brochure for editing services provided by the husband/wife Townley team. I took that little pamphlet home and sat on it for weeks. Finally, I inquired as to prices (@$1,000) and this was my first big step in letting the book leave my hands. After hemming and hawing for another couple of weeks, I delivered a manuscript to the Townleys. Since I was new to this process, and had been “ripped off” in various ways previously in life, I asked if I could pay half at delivery and the other half at pick up. Townley agreed and told me there was a two-week turn-around time. He delivered on his promise, and I got an education on editing that was worth every penny we paid.

Hi Unique, Oh my gosh no I did not know that I was his 8th wife. What kind of man gets married 8 times by the time he is 38? Or by the time he's 100 for that matter? It sounds like polygamy, with short breaks in between!