Finis

I just one minute ago typed the last word. The Early Fox is now revised.

What remains is to edit it again. I think I can't face the round of beta reading et al again. Sure, making a good book would and should take more than one round of revisions, but a self-published mystery that will be lucky to sell ten copies?

Maybe All Systems Blue will get the proper beta reader treatment.

I am telling myself that the process took as long as it did this time because, like almost everything about writing The Early Fox, I was re-learning how to write. Having a detailed set of notes from a beta reader let me take a long step back and look with new perspective on a lot of the things I was doing.

Some relatively easy to spot, like big chunks of lecture. Some harder, things I needed the Golgi Stain of a beta reader's notes to pick out from the text, like the way I belabored certain points in repetition. That one is also an indication of a problem in process; writing small chunks with long intervals between them meant I couldn't always remember if I'd already done a thing.

But it is done.

The next step is debridement. I left all the trimmed bits in the manuscript. Some of them inline, even; when I had a line or a full paragraph or two I'd decided (based again on those notes and that new perspective) I didn't need, sometimes I'd leave them in place and just mark them with a highlighter.

Really, I should re-read from the top and make sure I don't need those little bits after all. Maybe I will.

Right now, I'm just happy to be done with the hard part.