Books Are Like Salad in a Bag

image from www.freedigitalphotos.net

Picture this scenario: You want a salad, but you're too lazy tired busy to chop everything and put it together. What's the answer? Salad in a bag!

I love salad in a bag. It's the easiest thing in the world to prepare. Open bag. Dump in bowl. Add dressing. Eat!

If you're anything like me, you always have the best intentions. You see the salad, you buy it because it's easy, take it home, put it in the fridge, and forget about it. Then a few days later, you move a container of sour cream and discover the bag of salad again. You take it out and dump it in a bowl, but you notice that a few pieces have gone really brown and gross around the edges. So you start to pick them out. As you do, you notice more and more pieces that have gone bad. Soon, the pile of bad lettuce starts to outgrow the pile of good lettuce, until you get to the point where you wonder if there's anything good left in there at all or if you should just chuck the lot of it.

Turns out the same thing happens with books.

I got the edits back for my book today. Here's a picture of my editor.

From author Jon Keegan's Blog

I know it's the editor's job to pick apart a manuscript and help the author make their book even better, but I'm beginning to feel like my book is the salad in the bag. There is so much that needs to be chopped, it's sorely tempting to just toss it all.

It's irritating and frustrating. But in the end, the salad book will be better because all the gross, bad parts are gone. And just when I thought I was making Caesar salad, it may end up being a tossed salad. The finished product is going to be very different from what I originally envisioned. And also from what I've already shared with you!

So this Sunday, there will be no snippet. In fact, the snippets from the previous weeks will probably not make it into the final product. And in the meantime, be prepared to find me tired, cranky, and with considerably less hair than before.