Editing: A Love Letter to Future Readers

I just finished editing draft four of The Cardinal Witch.

Editing is exhausting. Frustrating. Humbling. It’s the part where you have to confront every decision you made when you were writing with abandon at one o’clock in the morning, fueled by adrenaline, caffeine, and far too much optimism. 

It’s where you tilt your head at a sentence and ask, “What the [bleep] was I thinking when I wrote that?”

But it’s also the part where you show your future readers how much you care.

When the villain breaks the book

This round, it was my antagonist, Sebastian, who brought me up short.

I thought I understood him. I thought his motivations were clear. And then—WHAM—deep in edits, while I was adjusting something else entirely, I realized I was wrong.

One small question tripped me: “If he believes X, then why would he say Y?”

That was quickly followed by, “Oh, crap.” (Okay, it was saltier than “crap.”)

Suddenly I wasn’t sure I understood what truly drove him at all. So I spent hours digging into Sebastian as deeply as I had some of my other characters. And when I did, that one shift in his reasoning rippled through the entire book.

Scenes broke... Dialogue stopped matching.

Half the story started to look like a teetering Jenga tower.

I’ll confess: I had a moment of despair, which, if I’m being honest, would have delighted Sebastian to no end.

Tearing it down to build it better

 But that pain—the self‑doubt, the line‑by‑line analysis of what Sebastian thinks and how that shows up in his actions—that’s the devotion behind editing.

That’s a writer saying, I can do this better.

When I tear out a scene and rebuild it, I’m doing it for a reader who hasn’t met this book yet. For the person who will, hopefully, stay up way too late turning pages. For the reader who deserves the best version of this story, not the version that was easiest for me to write.

For all of you.

And you will never see the hot mess, the frustration, or the WTF moments.

You’ll only see the result.

Editing as a love letter

It’s easy to see editing as a chore… as payment due for those wild nights writing until the wee hours of the morning. But editing isn’t punishment. It’s care. It’s commitment. It’s the part where I make sure the story you get is worth your time and your heart.

Sometimes that means letting the villain break the book so I can rebuild it better. Because writing (and editing) is a promise to the reader I haven’t met yet:

I want the time you spend with my book to be worth it.

Thank you to Jamez Picard, Nathan Dumlao, and Saif71 for sharing their images on Unsplash.