As I waited for my manuscript back from editor extraordinaire Gabrielle Harbowy, I knew it was already perfect. Perfect! My words were gold. Then I opened up my PERFECT manuscript…
Perfect: You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Turns out that my manuscript had a few errors. 1571. Yes, one thousand, five hundred and seventy one. Or fifteen hundred and seventy one. I assume my fearless editor has aged several years with her trials, and is probably still wearing cold compresses to help ease the pain from pounding her head against her desk.
However, progress has been made. I am now down to 432 outstanding errors. All of which I can attribute to outside influences beyond my control (I did not misspell that word–that was a keyboard malfunction; my kids wrote that section).
Of course, more worriesome are the 16 comments still waiting. Comments are the worst because they’re the editor throwing their hands up in the air and saying ‘screw it, this is a hot mess and I see no way to fix it other than nuking it from orbit’.
Perfect!