I love writing.

Usually.

But what you are looking at now is the first page of a stack of pages that makes my brain short circuit.  It makes me think about holding a paper bag over my face and having an elephant sized anxiety attack.

It makes me wonder why I did not train to be a trapeze artist instead of being a writer. (True reasons I can’t do that job:  I am way too heavy, not flexible, scared of heights, and don’t like flying through the air while spinning.)

These are page proofs.

That is their official name. “Page Proofs.”

The unofficial name is “Welcome, Writer, To 10 Days Of Editing Hell.”

This is the last chance  for a writer to find and edit errors before the book goes to print.

This is chapter one, page one, of my next book The Language of Sisters, out in September.

Here are the things I’d rather do than edit page proofs.

1. Chase a jaguar.
2. Run from a jaguar
3. Learn how to get a rattlesnake to dance out of a basket
4. Dress like a ghost and parade around town while cackling.
5. Eat dandelions.
6. Dance around a pole in a bikini though I have given birth to three children.

By the time I get this intimidating stack of pages I have edited my book eleven times. Yes, eleven. It is obsessive, I know.

I don’t want to read it a twelfth time, bash me in the head, jangle my bones, slap me on the butt with a banana, I so don’t.

I edit about 50 of these pages a day.  This should not be compared to reading, for fun and games and delight, a book. Especially a book that is so scary you go hide in a closet or a book so gripping you are out of your own head and in a different world.

No, this is 50 pages I have to read as if I am pulling a fine toothed comb through every word on the page while reciting, by memorization, every word in the dictionary and all American grammar rules.

I cannot miss a missing ‘to,’ in this manuscript.

I cannot miss a needed comma.

I cannot miss a comma that SHOULDN’T be there.

I cannot semi – sleep through a passage, especially when I realize to my UTTER HORROR that I have made a HUGE mistake in my story. (Hear me scream, beat my chest, say bad words!)

When I realize that I truly, utterly SCREWED UP, I have to write a pleading note to, in my case, Paula, my copy editor, who is a saint, and BEG her to make the change. I beg and beg and beg. I am pathetic.

And when I find ANOTHER ERROR and I realize I have SCREWED UP AGAIN, despite already editing the book eleven freakin’ times, the begging begins once more.

(Please, Paula, please. Whimper. Sob. Whine.)

It’s quite humbling.

One time I brought a dead girl back to life at the end of the book when I accidentally gave her something to say.

Another time I changed the race of a character from the beginning of the book to the end.

I have messed up names and locations.

Still another time I…well, let’s not talk about THAT error.

Everything must be perfect. Perfect is extremely difficult. Unattainable. But I try.

When the proofs are mailed back, there is a sense of relief.

The book is done.

I am done.

My eyes are fuzzy, my hair unwashed, and I have odd nervous ticks coming up here and there. I am sleepless, my insomnia a living devil in my bed, but the book is off and I can do no more.

On to the next story until the hellish page proofs arrive at my front door, giggling evilly at me in that really mean way only page proofs can do.

But I do hope you enjoy The Language of Sisters, I truly, really, totally do.