Today editing feels like this.

Writing is a passion, my hobby. Some days I want to write all day. When I do, I miss painting and feel guilty, because painting is my workhorse. I’m an unpublished writer and a query virgin. I’ve been writing for years. Everyday I read editor and writer blogs.

I wrote three memoirs and put them in a drawer. Each time I was finished, I told myself I’d never write again. Then I started writing flash fiction. Now I’m finishing a suspense called White Sky of Paris. I’ll tell you more about the 400 page manuscript soon enough, when I start to query it.

Last month I took Angela James’s Before You Hit Send on-line self-editing workshop. She’s the editorial director of Harlequin’s Carina Press.

In the course, Angela offers over thirty info-packed lessons starting from the basics. The lessons build up from basic tricks in microsoft Word to formatting, grammar, dialog tags, POV, author voice and a lot more. Anyone who wants to write better fiction will benefit from her course. What’s great is that you can work at your own speed and it’s very reasonably priced.

I love the way she presents the course.  Not as rules for writers but things to keep in mind while writing. Clearly, those suggestions are from a queen of editing experience. One thing Angela said about editing a book is that it shouldn’t take years. 

I learned so much from her course, and how to apply it to my writing, that now the snowball I’m pushing is going somewhere and it’s not getting bigger.