Copyedits Done In...and almost printed

Have spent far too long tonight trying to get my 'just-in-case' hard copy manuscript to print back to back. All it takes is for the printer to pick up two pages in the middle to ...



...well, to make for a long evening.

So, for your viewing pleasure, I bring you a little advice on novel-writing:

Apparently designed by a genius by the name of Anna Hurley, the original is HERE.

~kc

Copyedits Finished, Cha-cha-cha...

...tho' I do have a glossary to write. But who cares, tra-la! Tomorrow is another day! Ooo-da-lolly, and fa-la-la!




[Previous giddiness brought to you by Post-Copyedit-Euphoria, a condition in which writer sees light at the end of the publication tunnel, and harbours secret hopes that new book might one day be enjoyed by others...]

What else?

Well, there hasn't been much else in my life, lately. I am once again appallingly behind in email, all other projects and obligations have come to a grinding halt and so on, so I must pick up the pieces again next week. But in the meantime, something that made me laugh today:

McSweeney's take on MacBeth and MacDuff knicker-twisting over Semantics

Oh, and not funny, but interesting -- a response to the Wikileaks video travesty I referenced last week: Soldiers as Psychopaths.

More soon.

~kc

ZEPHYR Copyedits Redux

Edits are due on Monday, which means a Sunday-night latest deadline.

Looming, of course, the way deadlines do.

The way the whole editing process works goes something like this -- once the book is accepted and all the contract details ironed out, the editor takes a look to see that the thing generally makes sense. During this substantive phase, he or she (in my case, he) is looking at the forest, not the trees. (Though the truth is, he will likely make a few tree-ish observations, scraping a little moss here and trimming a few branches there, just because he is fond of horticulture. He is _born_ to horticulture. His blood runs sap. One must just accept these things as given and move on.)

The work is then sent back to the author who takes a deep breath, surveys the forest and either pronounces it good or runs away and throws self into nearest lake. Either way, for a book to emerge at the end, the author must ultimately send the manuscript back to the editor with changes made or, at the very least, discussions entered into.

The next step is the one this particular book and I are in at present, both of us having survived the substantive edit remarkably intact. The copy editor (generally, though not always, a different soul from the substantive editor ) examines the trees right down to the leaf (and in some cases, to the cellular level) to ensure not only that every i is dotted and t crossed, but that the formatting is consistent and correct throughout. This latter is because the next step sees the budding book move into the design phase and the designers like to have all the pesky formatting issues clearly established by the copy editors well before-hand.

This particular book has been quite a challenge for any number of reasons. The story does not develop in a linear fashion, and yet must still make sense as it unfolds. The format of the book is unconventional, certainly compared to my earlier books. The biggest design challenge we've had, in terms of text, anyway, in the earlier work was to include, in SECRET OF LIGHT, a copy of Leonardo's classic mirror-writing signature. MS. ZEPHYR'S NOTEBOOK, by contrast, is filled with memos, post-it notes, journal entries, correspondence written on various styles of letterhead, report cards, missing person's reports and so on.

More on this and other Zephyr-related vagaries soon. I have edits to finish...

~kc