Since my initial edits for Bladed Faith came in, might as well do a rambling #amwriting discussion on how I tackle this stage of a project. Everyone's process is different, bear in mind, so I'm only detailing mine in case it's helpful.

Step one might seem obvious, but it's still kind of important: I read the edit letter @bhvide sends me, usually several times. It's this letter that she'll detail what she views as the most important issues that need solved/discussed in the book as is.

I'm not trying to 'solve' these problems immediately, and rarely is she, either. As I've said before, an editor's job isn't to put out the fires, it's to point somewhere and go "I see smoke".

(Hopefully Brit won't mind, but here's a quick snapshot of what this letter can be like:)

As you can see, it's a lot of questions, so as I read through the letter, I'm not only thinking of answers to these questions, but I'm analyzing *why* she has these questions in the first place.

So once I've gotten an overall feel of where there's questions, what seems weak, things I might have left confusing, then I'll start going through the actual book. I don't care about the actual line edits at this point. That's last. Now I'm looking for comments.

This varies per editor, of course, but generally here's where I'll read super specific issues and problems, point out right as they're happening. I'll again point out very little is direct requests or solutions. The majority will be a variation of:

"This isn't working for me."

Doing this type of initial edit is often like a giant problem solving exercise. I have the book how it is, and I'm given a problem (say a character isn't believable) and then I start analyzing how to best address that specific problem.

Which of course means figuring out WHY that problem exists. Is the character boring? One note? Not enough time spent with them? Or is there a specific reaction they have in a single scene that is inconsistent?

I can't stress enough how important this is. So many problems, even gigantic ones, can be solved with very small changes if you know *exactly* why those problems exist. Don't start changing things until you know exactly why you are changing them.

So this is when I get spoiled and set up a phone call with Brit. It used to be a day later, sometimes it's only hours after receiving an email. But if the feedback seems harsh, or you're highly emotional upon reading, I talk about that here: https://twitter.com/thatdalglishguy/status/1263122917258416128?s=20

This phone call has specific things to address, but honestly? Part of it is just "you've read my book now, omg, can we talk about some of the cool stuff in it?"

This journey is hard, and it can be life-saving to just geek out about your book with someone who also loves it.

But down to business. I'm not there to *argue*. I'm not on the phone call to be be like "you thought character X was boring but I think X is amazing, why are you so wrong?"

Even if I disagree, that doesn't remove the problem that MY perception of the story and characters isn't being conveyed as desired to SOMEONE ELSE. So often how I think a character or situation is conveyed has been botched/done differently in the telling.

So this phone call is heavily about finding out the reasons underlying specific issues, particular things that, after reading the edit letter and notes throughout, I still don't have a good grasp on. This stage in particular is when having a great editor is a godsend.

Also, this phone call usually is a reverse of that edit letter I showed earlier: this time it's me asking tons of questions. "Did this work?" "Do you like this char?" "Why did this scene fall flat?" "Is char X unlikable because reason 1, 2, or 3?"

I'll often pitch solutions, especially if they seem obvious, but that's only a secondary goal. Generally, once I fully understand a problem, I can fix it just fine. I have confidence in myself there. The call is to make sure I fully grasp the actual problems.

Now we get to where I am today. I've read emails, notes, had phone calls. So how do I keep track of all this? How do I know what to change and tweak without getting lost?

With an email that doubles as a to do list.

(Poor @bhvide , btw, just send her sympathies that she deals with all this nonsense of mine)

So what I do is a giant list that is set up in a pretty consistent manner. It goes like this, a bit sloppy and rambly because it's me, but overall -

"To solve this problem (state problem), I'll be doing this (state a rough outline of proposed changes)."

Sometimes these can be two sentences long, sometimes it'll take multiple paragraphs to explain the solutions, but it gives me a nice way to focus on all the individual problems that were brought up as well as outline how the book will change because of them.

Now I want to make it clear, at this stage I will often still have issues I don't quite know how to solve. And what do I do? I end with those.

"I am still working on figuring out X, Y, and Z."

This is a reminder to myself to keep mulling on it while I work on everything else, and make sure that as I get deep into the weeds and hack the book apart with changes, I don't accidentally forgot to address a different issue.

After this? The easy part. Sorta. I've got a list of changes to make so I just...go do them.

Was I going to rewrite a dialog scene to make it more obvious that Character A is planning to murder Character B? I go do exactly that. And when I'm done, I delete it from the todo list.

My goal is to zero out that list. Blank slate it. I don't trust myself to reach a "this book is done now" feeling that some authors reach. I'm more mercenary. I have shit to fix, and once that shit is fixed, I send it back to Brit.

And that's basically my process. I'm at the "start fixing stuff" part. I've got a 3k word doc listing all my changes, with comments from Brit pasted in, and I'll get that down to 0. As I do, I'll update the "not sure how to fix" stuff at the bottom as well.

And then eventually Brit will do a second read, potentially send me more problems, and I'll do this process all over again. If I'm lucky, it'll just be a few small things. If not, then I may do even more drastic solution attempts compared to the first time.

(because if my more subtle/smaller changes to fix a problem didn't work the first time, it's likely the problem is deeper than I first thought - Soulkeeper was like this, and it resulted in round two of edits cutting a full seven chapter section).

Oh and to finish: at some point I'll go through and approve like 99% of Brit's line edits. But that's boring and easy.