Editing can be fun, too

Editing can be fun, in addition to improving the content of one's writing. I have found a number of places where little improvements popped up at me as I was going through my list of words to check. Of course, as I went, the list also began to grow. Initially, I found three words that I saw "too frequently" (to my eyes) that I thought might need to be altered in the content of each of the five books in my series. That list quickly grew to seventeen, and now stands at more than double that, with some grouped into categories. Many of these are fairly simple, consistency checks, to make sure I use the same style for all references to a particular character's name or title.

Some of them are kind of abstract, and the list just keeps getting longer. It now fills almost a whole page in what I think of as my deep background file, which contains my references on what should (or should have) happened when, changes I've made, back stories that aren't in the books, and the like. It could be viewed as a kind of outline file, but it was constructed mostly in reverse - after the stories were already written.

What does this mean? Delays in making the works available. I'm beginning to understand why Ms. Rowling took SO BLOODY LONG to come out with Deathly Hallows - getting it right doesn't come overnight.