writing the penultimate draft

"last but one"

two years since i started editing “my big baby,” the manuscript i’ve been lugging around in my thoughts every day since and for at least two years before that, i’m ready to send this thing off to war (the query trenches) and not think of it for the rest of the year (dream of its sequel) while focussing on writing other, new exciting things (query 100 agents in 10 weeks trying to convince them to represent me by virtue of its merits.)

well. almost ready.

not until the whole thing receives a eight hours of auditory attention in the form of me listening to it in faux-audiobook format while i scribble notes in a bullet-journal-style so loose as to barely register as such will it be almost, almost ready.

shout-out to the ‘Joe’ and ‘Geffen’ voices on Speechify, my problematic beloved.

what editing looks like this spring

those notes will send me back, for what i plan to be the second-to-last time, to the generously titled “BTA V6 - final pass, April 2026”. this is when i promise to decipher my own hand and apply only the changes i noted at the time—no more, no less—because if i meander away from that plan i will inevitably start noticing and making other changes that will—say it with me!—make things different, not better.

if the enemy of done is perfection, then the enemy of a query-ready manuscript is the author who wrote it. because on a scale of “sending a turd out into the world and believing it to be an instant classic” to “drafting a manuscript for a decade only to place it to marinate in a desk drawer and work on something else because you’ve convinced yourself you worked on the wrong thing to begin with,” i am but a decimal point away from working on something else.

snippets of where what i’ve been reading has led me

also what editing has looked like this spring: checklists, courses, Q&A recordings, contests, beat maps, writing with bar snacks

but! that is what this is for.

the public promise that this will be my final pass. here, now, in April 2026, is the last time i listen to the book as a whole, note-take on every chapter, scene and sentence. after this, edits will be excisions made with scalpels, not amputations with bone-saws. i keep dangling the treat of paying a professional do the final-final pass for spelling and grammar, perhaps the only way to keep myself from deciding that the same word used twice across 90k words should be considered an echo and therefore changed (is preclude noticeable enough?)

V1 was for me. V2 was for the eyes of internet writer friends; V3 convinced me to apply to a writers residency. V4 was what came of mentorship and dedicated writing time. V5 was my return after my first break in 18mos, and V6 is the culmination of the feedback of a widening net of friends. V7 will be for the critique of professionals—editors and agents—and maybe something between V8 and V10 will be for you, dear reader

xx g

this is what it’s all for, after all 👹

ps: would you like to beta read V6? if yes, drop me a comment and i’ll reach out with a link when she’s ready to go!