I used to feel energized by that command from the front of the sports hall! I still do weights classes, but after hearing loss, I have to imagine it. I am aware of the voice and just follow the demonstration. I’m always a beat behind everyone else, but at least I am still trying to keep as much muscle tone as I can. Even editing has to give way for keeping fit.
Did I finish “Lace”? No, but I did some research and then the proofs of “Heroes and Traitors” arrived from the publisher, so I had to set aside time to read my own book again. You would think that I would remember every word after eight rounds of editing. But no, the ninth still surprised me. It surprised me in a good way when I found turns of phrase I thought were rather clever, and it surprised me in a bad way when I found the odd continuity lapse!
Editing proofs is primarily about spotting typographical errors, such as a punctuation mark in the wrong place or an “in” instead of “it”. Professional proofreaders are recommended, but after the general editor had picked up a lot of details including wrong punctuation marks, I was confident that I could do my own checking. Errors do get through time and time again, but when you haven’t looked at something for a few weeks and virtually the entire piece is perfect, the little anomalies do eventually stick out.
I found only two typos in 368 pages. Most of the changes I wanted were my own errors. For example, in a few places I wanted to change a word so that it was a better fit with a previous reference to an event, there were a couple of clumsy sentences that I wanted to re-order, and (horror of horrors) I spotted a couple of continuity errors. Most publishers will allow the author a few cosmetic changes. I am so hoping that my cosmetic changes will be acceptable! I felt that it was a fairly modest set of corrections that I posted back, but that is only my naïve perception!
Editing feels like drudgery. You just have to start at the beginning and plough through, carefully reading every page. I have discovered that it is the real lifeblood of the book. When I finished my first draft of “Heroes and Traitors”, which was then called “The Peace of Kimalloa”, I thought that the hard work was over. I was taking a course called “Finishing Your Novel” at that point, and the awful realisation from it was that I needed to do some serious re-work.
The second draft was hard. Then I took on a developmental editor and realised I needed a third, fourth, fifth draft… Comments from trusted readers prompted some elements to get a sixth and seventh adjustment before submission, and then the publisher’s editor picked up other things that prompted me to perfect version eight…
Hopefully, I will be able to apply lessons learnt in the sequel and the process will be quicker. But then, I’ve only got to page 3…
