Regular readers of this blog know that sometimes I include insights into the world of publishing. Today is one of those days.<\/p>\n
Over time in this blog, I\u2019ve discussed the various stages of editing. \u201cPre-submission editing is done by my at-home editors; Line editing with the editorial letter, is done by my book editor; Copy editing is done by people who know way more about English Grammar than I do; and First Pass or Galley editing is done by me and several others once the manuscript is in typeset mode. <\/p>\n
Today we\u2019ll be talking about editing phase number two\u2014line editing and editorial letter. Here\u2019s how that works. The author submits a completed manuscript. The editor goes through it, doing some copy-editing in the process, and then sends the author what\u2019s called “the Editorial Letter.” In it the editor outlines where there may be holes in the plot and what changes must be made before going forward. <\/p>\n
The words of my first-ever editorial letter, received in late 1983, are still engraved on my heart: \u201cUntil Proven Guilty takes place over a period of several days. All days are consecutive. No days are skipped. Unfortunately, between the first Thursday and the first Friday, there is an extra unnamed day. Please fix.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I did. I was able to extract most of the scenes from that \u201cextra\u201d day and duct tape them into other spots in the book, but there was one scene that was left on the cutting room floor. It was a scene in which Beau goes to a hotel looking for Anne Corley, the new mystery woman in his life. When she isn\u2019t in her room, he ends up drowning his sorrows in the bar where she comes looking for him. (Two things to say about that. Number 1: I had more than once dredged my former husband out of bars where he had no idea I\u2019d be able to find him, doing so by spotting his truck parked on the street. Number 2: I thought it was a pivotal scene that demonstrated the instant and very mutual attraction between Beau and Anne Corley.)<\/p>\n
Bottom line, I still miss that scene. And now, those of you who have read UPG can join me in mourning that missing scene as well. It\u2019s the one that go away.<\/p>\n
After that I learned my lesson. Once I started keeping a name file for each book, I started putting in a time stamp\u2014day of the month, day of the week, and time of day\u2014on each chapter. It\u2019s something that has served me in good stead over the years\u2014up until right now.<\/p>\n
While writing Missing and Endangered, (M&E in my files) I did my name file in the time-tested fashion, applying a time stamp to each chapter on a book opening on a Monday morning in early December in the year 2017. (Choosing 2017 is totally arbitrary, I know, but it\u2019s easier to write about the recent past than it is to predict the future.) <\/p>\n
For a while I was writing along like mad and making excellent progress on M&E because we were snowed in. We couldn\u2019t get up and down our hill and neither could company. For close to a week, we stayed home with no visitors while I focused on writing. Then the copy edited manuscript for Credible Threat\u2014the next Ali book\u2014arrived in my email in-box. Knowing I\u2019d be away from Joanna while I dealt with Ali, I asked Bill to read what I had done so far on M&E. I figured that by going back through and installing his corrections, I\u2019d be able to get back into the Joanna book after my detour through Ali.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s what I was doing last night. I was sitting here working, minding my own business, when all of a sudden, Joanna\u2019s life took a sudden spurt forward and moved directly from Thursday night to Saturday morning. In the process of adding in new material to the beginning of the book, I had somehow lost track of the weekdays, and rather than adding in an \u201cextra-unnamed day\u201d I had in fact skipped one. Let\u2019s just call it a time warp!<\/p>\n
So last night I went to bed, worrying about what to do. After a few hours of tossing and turning\u2014between midnight and two a.m\u2014I finally figured out a solution. Because I had only three nights to deal with, I moved the start of the book from Monday to Wednesday. Then I did a global search on my computer (something totally unavailable in 1983)\u2014for every mention of a weekday, moving Mondays to Tuesdays and so forth.<\/p>\n
M&E is fixed now, both in the manuscript and in the name file, and I’m able to move forward again. And trust me, it\u2019s far easier to fix now before the manuscript is done that it would be at the line editing stage with another mind-boggling editorial letter.<\/p>\n
I thought that my readers\u2014and especially the ones who see me as a \u201cprolific writer,\u201d sailing in seemingly trouble-free fashion from book to book\u2014might want to know that sometimes the sailing isn\u2019t exactly trouble free.<\/p>\n
Yes, if you see ducks out motoring around a pond, they, too, seem to be sailing smoothly along. The problem is, nobody sees those little webbed feet just out of sight beneath the surface of the water, paddling like crazy.<\/p>\n
I just gave you a glimpse of my little webbed feet, and another window or two on my writerly world.<\/p>\n
Enjoy, meantime I\u2019m back to M&E on Saturday morning for real this time.<\/p>\n
PS<\/p>\n
This week one of my blog readers from Canada went to band practice. The band leader, who is also my reader\u2019s friend, was recounting how she just wasn\u2019t feeling well. She was losing weight, felt nauseated much of the time, and didn\u2019t want to eat because nothing tasted right. She said that her doctor told her it was probably the flu. Due to The A List paperback announcement, my reader encouraged her friend to go back to the doctor and ask to be tested for kidney function. Yesterday she got the results and yes, she does suffer from kidney dysfunction. <\/p>\n
Am I ever glad I sent out that paperback announcement for The A List. Someone really was looking over my shoulder when I wrote it\u2014and over my reader\u2019s friend\u2019s shoulder as well!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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