Oh Sheep!

Hello again! 

Editing is complex, time-consuming work, and a lot of the time it is utterly exhausting. That said, I've been having some... unusual issues lately, and I'm just beginning to appreciate the humor in how a little foresight could have saved me a lot of work in the long run (a major theme of my WIP as it happens.) 

I don't really know how educational this will be, but nonetheless, how about we laugh together at how quickly simple things can become ridiculously complicated?

A little bit of backstory before we get into this, my WIP takes place on a farm, more specifically a fiber-producing farm (often called a fiber ranch,) and some of the more notable members of this farm, for the sake of this story anyways, are the sheep. 

Now, before I even began to write this book, I carefully selected every type and breed of animal that I would use. For the sheep, I decided upon Corriedale sheep. As they were soft, and cuddly looking, with good fiber, and just about the aesthetic I wanted to maintain, they were perfect... Or so I thought. 

After writing the entire book, and finishing the first edits on several chapters, I suddenly realized I'd never checked into whether ram lambs were born with horns or grew them later in life. Halfway through this search, a horrible thought struck me; I'd never seen a photo of a Corriedale ram. One more search later, I knew they were naturally polled (born without horns.) 

Okay, so I'd need to tweak a few things... that's not so bad, right? So, I went on and edited some more... only to suddenly realize that the ram lambs needed to have horns for a dream sequence I'd written, that I absolutely refused to remove.

Annoying, but life goes on. Back to breed researching. Five plus types of sheep later I come to the conclusion that no type of sheep exactly matches the needs I have, so, yet again, I would need to clean it up through more editing. And that, dear reader, is how I came to be halfway through my first edit, with new Icelandic sheep, and a sudden need to put horns on all my ewes, reduce the amount of lanoline in their wool, and consider adding more color variety in the flock. 

But wait. Because you are currently missing the best part of this all... I never even say what kind of sheep they are in the book itself. It's all in my notes, head, and vision board. So, no one would ever even know the difference.

Editing is strange, but at the end of the day, at least I'll know it was done with care... right?

Have a great day, and keep writing!