Heard from my editor today on my big rewrite. Was about to do a "what do you do while you're waiting" blog, which would be about my writing process, not the publishing process, but I didn't want you all to get bored and wander off somewhere. But don't have to, because she's reported in. She finished her line edit and is generally "very pleased" with my rewrites. This brings on a big sigh of relief. She wants a few more changes: now that she's read the whole thing again with the changes I already made, there are a few places where she found it bogging down, so she wants me to tighten it up. That will be over the next few days. Then, assuming she likes the way I do that, she'll turn the line-edited ms. over to the copy editor.

Then what? Then the copy editor, working in a different color, will take a few weeks on the same physical ms. Then it comes to me. I'll make the changes suggested by the line- and copy-edits, or not make them with damn good reasons which I'd better be able to explain. Then I send back both the ms., which will by then have 3 sets of marks on it, and a disk of the final version.