I’m like an addict; I can’t stop writing. I had every intention of going through my first book one last time, correcting typos and then I was going to call it done. I drafted my query letter and thought I could run through my final edit in a week—two, tops—and then start looking for agents.
But here I am, like an addict, unable to give it up. It wasn’t too bad at first; I really did just correct typos and fix a few sentences here and there that I didn’t like that well. And then it went from that to fixing entire paragraphs, and by the time I got to chapter nine, I was scrapping entire chapters and rewriting them from a completely different direction. None of it changes the plot of the book, but it definitely affects character development and interaction. I’m also managing to work in a lot more backstory, which really didn’t exist when I started writing it. But, man alive, it’s going to take me months to do the final edit at this rate (although I’m hoping to speed it back up shortly, because the latter chapters were edited much more recently than the earlier ones, so they shouldn’t warrant as much tinkering).