Tag: editing

First Proof Copy!

So last Friday I got Hurricane Baby’s first proof copy, a preliminary PDF of what the book will look like once it’s printed. I was so moved by the care my publishing company is taking with this book! Art on the title pages, beautiful formatting within, just wonderful work so far!

My job was to proofread it yet again. And guys–I found over a hundred and seventy typos. I was appalled at myself. I have been slaving over this manuscript for almost twenty years. And I found commas that were supposed to be periods and periods that were supposed to be commas and double periods and sentences without periods at the end and a very few spelling errors (thank the Lord). Inconceivable that I even got any kind of hearing from anyone I sent it to. The line-editor before this proof had found over three hundred errors.

I was so embarrassed for little ol’ me, sending something so flawed out into the world. I had checked and rechecked and run grammar and spelling checks over and over. I had read it printed out, onscreen, everything.

But I don’t need to just beat myself up–so now I have a plan. I know my eyesight isn’t good and won’t improve any as I get older. I am going to have to magnify up the font to I guess the size where the manuscript will have 500 pages and read line by line at every stage of writing. I don’t want to embarrass myself like that ever again.

So now it is back in the hands of the publisher, and I will wait patiently to see what comes next. I think it will be a final proof copy that I will read again for errors, then in February it will go to print!

SO EXCITING AND GETTING REAL!

Moral of the story: editors are human, and so are you. But taking the time to re-read is never wasted. Other eyes are a big help, too. Let’s be careful out there!

Line-Edits!

I got line-edits last week! So I spent yesterday working on that project. Only 335 punctuation corrections! (Ugh.) I did notice a trend–a lot of em-dashes had been typed incorrectly, and I LOVE using em-dashes, especially in dialogue. And I love writing dialogue. So that was that.

Only content question the editor had was about Leilani, James’ second wife, having such an unusual name. I did not know this–it’s Hawai’ian for “royal child”, which was perfect for the spoiled baby of the family! But that was only a happy accident–I certainly didn’t think that up while I was writing, and it’s doubtful that Leilani’s parents would have either. So I dreamed up a new explanation for why her parents named her that–that you will have to buy the book to see :).

Now it goes for formatting into InDesign, then another read to make sure nothing horrifying mechanical-wise goes through once it’s converted to a PDF. Then I read proof versions, then it goes back into design for final formatting of the text.

I am trying so hard to be calm and professional in my interactions with them, but I can’t help for my joy to come out! It’s really getting real! In eight months, my book will be out on bookstore shelves, Amazon, Barnes & Noble! A big goal for my life since I was a very young thing! I have been writing stories for FOREVER. Treasure stories cribbed from the Bobbsey twins’ adventures when I was a kid, teen romances when I was a teenager, short stories in my first Master’s program–I’ve had stories in my life longer than almost anything except my parents. And I’m so close to having a book!

It boggles my mind how far I’ve come.

Onward!

Proofing

So now I am at the nitpicking stage of writing–correcting commas, passive voice, etc. etc. One of my readers said I used passive voice too often. So I did a daring exercise–I ran a total find-and-replace that deleted all instances of the word “HAD”.

It worked.

I’m putting all my sentences into active voice with that one deletion. Often it came out cleanly without needing to change the sentence at all. Other times I had to work out the new tense of the action verb that it preceded. But I will be on the lookout for this in manuscripts from now on.

So in checking all my prose I am correcting grammar and rewriting sentences and doing all those tiny, tiny tasks that make a manuscript look professional and polished. I work on one chapter a day, passing the time until my last reader gets back with me with feedback on the story as a whole.

After I hear back, I will hopefully pull the manuscript apart again and make improvements and make it even better. And I think it can be better. I’m under no illusions that what I’ve done is the best I can do. But I may have done the best I can do for this story now without more input. So I am looking forward to that.