Editing-Packing in what is important!

Happy 100 degree plus June to you!  As the day gets brighter and flowers and people begin to wilt, I intend to do my best to hide inside and continue to edit my book, Mirror Images. To me, editing is serious and of utmost importance.  I have been guilty recently of whining and complaining about the difficulty.

Over the last few days I have come to realize there are more important things.

One serious disadvantage of so many warm days and dry parched ground in Colorado has been the horrible fires near Colorado Springs.  Myself and many of my fellow Missourians have driven across the abyss that is Kansas (Sorry, so not a fan of the I-70 drive.) to visit the very tourist places and towns now being burned.  It is frightening to think of the tens of thousands of people who are being temporarily or permanently displaced by something they cannot control.  My son in the Army is on the "safe" side of town, but has been working to help the people who have been evacuated.  He, like many other people of the city, is very busy these days.

I am glad that many people who have been evacuated had some notice to be able to remove some items from their houses.  But when I think how hard that really would be, it dismays me.  Would you try to keep the practical items or focus more on treasured things?  Would you know what was really important if you had to hurry?  I am not certain I would even know where I kept everything I would find important without some looking around.  How would you prioritize?  How would you be able to edit your whole life?

Today I am editing.  To me, my book is like a home I love.  And I am making the decisions of what practical things to keep, what lines and passages are my treasures, and I do have to sometimes search around to find and determine what is important to me to keep.

But it is just a book.  And that is a statement I won't always make.  I get to choose when and what to edit from my book.  If I am smart and save my drafts I can go back and get something if I decide it is actually important after all.  The fire victims don't have that option.  If my book were to disappear I would be upset and angry and sad.  But then I would do what so many people in Colorado and other places are going to have to do, grieve and start over.

Editing is simply a process I control.  There truly are more important worries in the world.