Starting the big edit

The joy at having finished book 3 is seeping away as the task of editing the thing kicks in.
It's a strange mix of emotions - reading, editing, adding to a manuscript you have ceremoniously declared "Finis" not a week before.
First of all as you read it you weep tears of joy at the bits that work - at the dialogue, sense of place and lovely things you have basically forgotten writing. I some times think the good writer genie has come in and fiddled with my work in my absence like the wee elves from the Elves and Shoemaker. (I loved that book when I was little, by the way - all the fancy shoes with the fancy buckles...).
You also do a fair share of cringing too - at the mistakes, the bad sentence structure, the typos. (I drop small words a lot. I think it's a shorthand thing) Sometimes I read a sentence and wonder what the feckity feck I was thinking. It makes no sense. It has a joyful randomness. I can only think I battered down a line from whatever was on the telly at the time.
And sometimes you just want to cry when you realise there is a glaring plot hole that requires major surgery.

Still I promise myself that when this is done, I get to write the next one - and it's going to be a lot of fun.