Nit-picking

Anna, my editor at Snowbooks, has gone through my manuscript for Zuzu's Petals and marked where she thinks there should be a comma, or shouldn't be a comma, where I have used too many ands, where she wants me to use a capital letter - etc, etc, etc - and then sent me the marked manuscript for me to agree or disagree with each of her changes.

When she did this for Plotting for Beginners, she seemed to want a lot of changes, and I argued with many. Poor Anna. There are half as many changes this time, and I've argued with only a handful. What's happened in the last two years? Am I less precious and more pragmatic? Am I a better writer or less opinionated? Or have I changed to be more like Anna? You're supposed to grow to be like your pet. Do writers become more like their editors?

A (non-writing) friend said to me "How can you bear to have someone picking over your writing like that, criticising it, wanting to make changes? Don't you feel incredibly annoyed?"

The answer is no. I love the process of going through the book with Anna. It feels so good to have someone caring about my book as much as I do - every sentence, every word, every full stop. She loves the book and she wants it to be the best it can be. And so do I.

Zuzu's Petals will be published next May. Hooray!

On quite another tack, our cat Chione came to live with us 2 years ago today. Isn't she beautiful?