I brought home Psychic Passions from my editor today.

Whew. That part is over. I was terrified when I first brought my book to the editor I hired to have it edited. He is a well respected, retired university professor of British decent. He taught at the University of BC, York University in Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, College of Journalism in London/UK and several Medical Colleges lecturing about practices in Naturopathic Medicine. I am a woman whom did not earn my grade twelve diploma until I was 26, I had slaved all my life to a system and a family, and I am now just discovering who I am and what I am all about.

Why would I feel comfortable handing over something that I toiled over so much? I feel like I had birthed that novel like I had my own children, with hard labour, it's my newest baby. I was terribly awash with fear and anxiety thinking; Will he laugh at my audacity to think I could do something as extensive as this? Would he be horrified at my ghastly use of grammar and punctuation? Would he scoff at the way I pushed the envelope and crossed some invisible boundaries? Would he look at me like the freak that I think I am? Would he want to chop it up after I told him I wanted to keep the unique Canadian flavor in my flow of speech, my slang terms, my Canadiana?

I really judge myself far worse than anyone else ever has in my life.

The answers to the questions... No, no, no, no and no.
Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He did say that with his British upbringing, education and expertise that it was hard ignoring my distinct Canadian flavour, but he survived it and was rather sucked into my novel right until the end. He handed back my manuscript and we went through it.

He pointed out the minor corrections he'd made, the occasional spelling error my spell checker had missed, a few (there instead of their) faux pas, my over use of commas and the odd capital letter misplacement.

He did not laugh at me. He told me he was impressed with my intelligence and my knowledge of medical terminology.

He admitted I had plenty of punctuation errors, but offered to tutor me and pull me up to speed on some of the fundamental rules I could no longer recall.

He did not think I pushed the envelope too far and that what I wrote was not distasteful. He did say he'd had to stop now and then because of the intense feelings that it had "aroused" in him.

He also did not mention that he thought I was a freak and he even expressed looking forward to working with me again.

Best of all, my story is pretty much intact. There are many, many pages that went untouched and that gives me plenty of confidence.

Patting self on back now. Atta gal Ally, there's no doubt about it, it's ok to be Canadian eh. LOL.

So now that I have my manuscript back, the 500 words per day limit goal that I set for writing my next novel will be on hold temporarily. I am at 22,000 words so far but it will still be there waiting for me. I will be busy for now correcting the changes from my manuscript onto my computer document.

Let the "LAST" edit begin...

PS. Holding up wine glass and toasting to all my friends.
Mmmm, 2006 Grey Monk, Kerner - Late Harvest. An Okanagan Valley white wine, VQA certified. Awww, so incredibly delicious.