I have to say it was fun.

Not that I was expecting it to be boring or stressful, but new experiences can be tough, for everyone involved. I think we all passed the challenge with flying colours.

Even my voice held up – sort of. I sat down at the table armed with cough drops, gingerale and hot tea and some Kleenex… just in case I started stuffing up again… not because I was afraid they’d make me cry. No, really.

It was nice to see my theory validated. “Editing other people’s work makes it easier to spot errors in your own.” Ok, so maybe it’s just the first part that’s been validated so far. We shall see about the rest, but I have great faith. The force is strong with these two

*sighs* I have GOT to stop quoting Star Wars!

Unless of course I’m doing a tasks that I despise, then time crawls slower than cold molasses running uphill during a January deep freeze in the North Pole.

It doesn’t help that my cold is still lingering on. I woke up this morning being the snotty-nosed brat my father always accused me of being. The good news, my cold is breaking up, so tomorrow I’ll be fine. It still means I have to get through the rest of today first.

And… it won’t help me tonight. I have no voice and have to attend our editing group meeting. The good news is it’s my stuff we’re going over. So I won’t have to talk that much. The bad news is I won’t be able to defend my word choices unless I haul out some paper and a sharpie. (*makes a mental note to pack her sharpies*)

But on Wednesday night I started feeling cotton-heady, Thursday I was feeling quite blah. Not really sick, but not well either. While the other symptoms didn’t get bad, I started coughing. I get nasty coughs and this was no different. Apparently I don’t have a light version of coughing. It starts at heavy and boosts itself to bronchial. Whee – lucky me.

It is better today, so at least the duration is tolerable, but it’s hard to code or write or even think, when you keep losing your place every time you attempt to breathe and it becomes a coughing fit.

Apparently I become a whiny little girl when I’m sick too:) This is especially upsetting because as a little girl I was never whiny

I took my little Sony digital camera and recorded the impromptu choir that sang along with our national anthem as the medals were awarded. I don’t think there was a dry eye on the street.

I’ve finally had a chance to experiment with youtube.com and post the video – enjoy. (oh and sorry about the shaky camera work, there were people bumping in to me left right and center)

I’m very lucky. I have a group of amazing people around me who are supportive and encouraging. Some of them I’ve brought even closer and they’ve become part of my process. They not only keep me to task on my deadlines, they are active participants in my editing methods. They are the angels (or devils) on my shoulder as I go through my novel chapter my chapter polishing here and rewriting there.

I make it sound easy don’t I?

Being part of an editing group is perhaps the most stressful association I’ve ever had. Sure we laugh and joke and enjoy our time together, but it’s much harder to have someone you like and trust, point out your silly errors than a complete stranger, in a city far away, sitting at a huge editor’s desk, judging your work worthy… or not.

Line by line edits can be soul crushing.

Over the past months I’ve forgotten how hard it can be. The members of my group and I have grown used to each others styles and know how to give a critique without being rude or obnoxious or inadvertently push each other’s buttons. Over the past few years, other people have come and gone without much fanfare. They’ve been friends of the other members so for me, there’s been nothing personal at stake.

Now, I’m the one bringing in the friend. Suddenly I’m terrified, but in a good way.

It’s time for me to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. Even though we’ve been writing pals for a few years and I’ve edited some of his stuff, this will be the first time he reads anything I’ve written. Not only will he read it, he will critique it as well.

I’m sure you can hear my knees knocking together in fright.

My pride hopes he doesn’t find anything really stupid mistakes in my prose. He’s more of an expert in sci-fi than I am. If some of my science doesn’t quite jive, I’ll be grateful for his correction. His background is very different from my other editing partners, which is a plus. My readers won’t be the same, so neither should my editors.

I know it’s illogical, but it will be harder to hit send on my submission this week. But what’s life without a few challenges along the way?

Actually I just finished reading “All a Twitter” by Tee Morris. It was very good. I’ve been watching some of the supposed ‘gurus’ of social media and find heis definitely one of the better ones. He seems to be the one who gets it the best, or at least he shares my philosophy about how to best use Twitter, Facebook etc.

We’re really starting to ramp up our promotion of our books to sell (direct links to my novels are on the sidebar to the right). We were originally waiting for them to get listed with Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Chapters etc. But our distributor is still having technical difficulties. Sure we can do it ourselves, but the pay off once Smashwords gets us up and running will be far greater. So we’ll wait… somewhat patiently. The nice thing is that Smashwords is doing a pretty good job of keeping us informed, so we’re not left in the dark, wondering what the hell is going on.

Otherwise, life is pretty quiet today. I have almost all the work I need to do done, just a couple of web pages to program, then it’s back to writing. Now that I’ve set-up the novel in flashbacks, it’s flying. (Whew!)

Have a great day and don’t get too soggy once it finally starts raining.