It's off!

After way more time than originally planned editing the ms, it's finally headed back to the editor.  It started at 103,000 words and ended up at 76,000 words, so much red ink was spilled. 

I miss the characters already.  Am I mad?  I guess when you've watched them do everything--and I mean EVERYTHING--it can be hard to let go. 

I worry about the book:  will it sell; will readers like the setting of southern Spain, which I consider very romantic but is considered an 'unusual' setting; will I be able to re-focus on the current book without too much difficulty. . . .

But for now, I'm going to celebrate the fact that my 'baby' is as good as I can make it right now and hope and pray that the editor will like the revisions.  

What do you do to distract yourself while waiting for an editor's reply?

Wax on, Wax off

Or, how do you polish?

I have 5 days to go through one of my old manuscripts and get it ready for submission.  Very excited that I got a request for the full manuscript, but now panic is setting in.  I polished up the first three chapters when I sumitted the partial, but I wrote this historical novel. . . at least 7 years ago, because that's when I went back to school.  My writing has improved since then.  But I only have a week.

Do you work on the little things, or do you look at the overall story arc?  I'm tempted to do the latter, but what if I find a big hole?  5 days isn't much time to fix it, especially when the bulk of that day is taken up with the day job, and this isn't a week I can take off much in the way of extra time. 

I know there are many people out there smarter than me, so I'm appealing to that collective wisdom.  What's my best choice, given just a few days' time?