Editing ones own work is always difficult, but even more so whether there are decisions to be made and things to look up, rather than just errors to fix, in the final pass. For example, in one recent three-hour session, even though I’d already had two professional edits of the novel, I spent time:
- finding out how I spelled “moustache” in the first book
- looking up greetings appropriate for an afternoon tea party / art exhibit
- learning how to force an em-dash to stay with a quotation mark on the same line in Word (you can’t)
- deciding whether it should be M.P. or MP
- removing the word “so” everywhere because I use it too much
- looking up whether they would have called it a comforter in 1863 (yes)
- changing colloquial phrases (“gone up” to “been increased”)
- realizing the appalling necessity of a thesaurus
All of which make for a better book. It’s a little different than grabbing a red pen and making some marks, and really shouldn’t be done by someone else. And I admit to some frustration that I missed things, as in “how could I not have caught that on the first four reads?” But it’s all part of the journey.