What to Do with your Edited Manuscript

Receiving your manuscript back from your editor can be a harrowing experience. So much blood and tears were shed over it. What if your editor hates it?

It starts out with you checking your email like a madman about a week before your editor said she’d have it ready for you, until you’ve exceeded your friend’s email-checking obsession by checking yours over 50 times per day.

And then it appears in your inbox two days early. You think “Oh God, why is it early?! I’m not ready for this!”

At this point, the subject might as well read “WARNING: HEART ATTACK ENCLOSED.” You wonder if anyone around you knows CPR. Didn’t Julius Caesar die of a heart attack? Oh. No, he was stabbed. Like a bunch of times. That’s probably a better fate.

You run to the bathroom and throw up.

Then you come back and stare at it. What…