Lately I’ve been writing the blog on Sunday or Monday. Today I’m writing it on Wednesday. Why? Because it’s been an editing kind of week.

When people ask questions about the writing process, they’re generally referring to the creative process—how do I go about starting a book and eventually finishing it. But as my blog readers know, that’s only the beginning of the story when it comes to getting a book printed and on the shelves, and editing is what comes between writing a book and having it ready to read.

That process is generally divided into three parts—the editorial letter which comes with my actual editor’s suggestions. Next is the copy-editor—think of your most demanding English teacher tearing you apart with her red pencil. Third comes the page proofs. When I was co-editor of our high school newspaper, we called them galleys. That’s when the material has been typeset and it’s time to make final, last-minute changes.

Last week two sets of editing showed up three days apart, with Smoke and Mirrors at editing stage two, and The Taken Ones at stage three. I’m a first-in-first-out kind of girl, so I went to work on Smoke and Mirrors, and it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. More on why a bit later, but for the record, in 380 pages of manuscript, there were 7,315 changes. Some of those came from the copy-editor, all of them marked in red. I have to mark each one as either accepted or rejected. Some of them are changes made by me. Those come out in a gold color which aren’t exactly easy to read.

I finished the job late last night, translated the manuscript from Pages to Word, and sent it to New York. Then I went to bed. Usually when I’m done with a job like that I sleep like a baby. Last night I didn’t. According to my watch I slept for four hours and fifteen minutes. Why? Because I wasn’t happy with some of the copy-editor’s suggested changes, and I didn’t go to sleep until finally making up my mind that I’d get up in the morning, undo that set of changes, and send a revised version of the copy-edited manuscript to New York.

This is a copy of the email that accompanied the manuscript:

Last night when I finished the copyediting and sent the manuscript, I was still pretty hot under the collar about the naming thing. The copyeditor did a good job of straightening out some of the timing tangles, but she was so focused on character names that she missed a number of echoes. I think I caught more of those than she did.

When I finish a job like that, I usually sleep like a baby. Last night I didn’t. According to my phone, I slept for four hours and fifteen minutes. I tossed and turned, wrestling with the naming thing. For some of the minor characters I complied, but by the end of the manuscript I was beyond frustrated. The copy-editor’s main objection seemed to be that many of the characters’ names started with the same letter.

During the writing process, when I give characters names, I try to take into consideration who they are and what their circumstances are. In this book, David Holbrook didn’t really come into focus as a character for me until I gave him the middle name of Leon after my late nephew, David Leon Lane, who passed away from cancer twenty years ago. (See the dedication page of Smoke and Mirrors.)

The copy editor’s main complaint seemed to be that several characters’ names started with the same way, with the letter E—Ali’s mother, Edie; David’s grandmother, Edna Holbrook; and the bad guy’s wife, Eva Baker.

FYI, I grew up in a family of seven kids. There was a Janice, a Jeannie, a Judy, a Jim, and a Janie. The only time that was a problem was when our mother was mad as hell and couldn’t spit out the right name: “Ja, Je, Ju—whoever you are you know who you are!” In other words, it didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I rather liked it.

As for the book? I couldn’t very well change Edie’s name since she’s been Edie with an E from book number one. And when it came to Edna Holbrook? Gran was an Edna the moment she popped into my head. That left me with Eva Baker, an important but not major character. So I tried changing her name. I finally settled on Yvonne. It didn’t really grab me, but I thought it would work. (In doing the find and replace for Eva, I ended up with an unexpected Yvonne in the middle of unbeliEVAble.).

But the more I worked on the book, the less I liked Yvonne. That name was just a series of letters strung together, and they didn’t say anything about who the somewhat mysterious character actually was. So I took another stab at it, changing the name again, this time from Yvonne to Ida. The thing is, the character in question is a glamorous aging socialite and a former Miss America Pageant contestant. In my mind, someone named Ida is more likely to be an apron-wearing grandmother.

So finally, sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I made up my mind. “That’s it,” I told myself. “Tomorrow I’m changing Ida back to Eva.” That’s when I finally fell asleep—for a while. The problem is, I’m eighty-one years old. I can’t sleep for any length of time without getting up overnight for a pitstop. It was during pitstop number two, sitting there in solitary splendor, when I finally realized where Eva Baker came from.

My high school senior English teacher was Mrs. Medigovich—Eva Medigovich. She was tall and slender. She always wore sleek designer-style sheaths with shiny three-inch heels. She strode the halls of Bisbee High School like a fashion model on a catwalk, but she wasn’t exactly gorgeous. She had a sharp, beakish nose, a large black mole in the middle of her chin, and wore her long, black hair in a huge bun at the nape of her neck. She scared the hell out of everybody in her classes, varsity football players included. Not only was she frightening, she was mysterious. She was definitely Mrs. Medigovich, but she lived alone in a room at the YWCA and took her meals at the Copper Queen Hotel. There were unsubstantiated rumors that her husband was a gambler who lived in Reno, and she only saw him during the summers. I don’t know to this day if any of that was true.

And that’s when the light came on, not in the bathroom, but in my head. That’s where Eva Baker came from—the first and only Eva in my life, and that’s why Eva Baker has to be EVA Baker. I got up first thing this morning and changed all the Idas back to Evas. That was a fun find-and-replace operation since the words Idaho and private jets figure prominently in the story. In other words, lots of ideas were in need of removal, but I believe they’re all gone now.

I’m going to need a nap this afternoon, but I’m feeling a whole lot better about the book. And now here’s the mostly Ida-free copy of the manuscript.

JAJ

Okay, now that this week’s blog is written, it’s time for me to focus on the page/galley proofs for The Taken Ones. They’re due in New York by April 30. I should be able to make that deadline. Hopefully this one won’t be as tough.