pameladean | All the Niggling

The copy-edit of the Liavek collection, which Pat and I decided (with the agreement of the publisher) to call Points of Departure, arrived a couple of weeks ago. Sunday evening I emailed my version of the file to Pat, who had agreed to merge the two and make sure that my unfamiliarity with Microsoft Word and, indeed, with any kind of electronic editing and copy-editing arrangement whatsoever, had not created any horrors that needed fixing.

There were some editorial remarks and changes as well, but very minor ones, the editor having thought that we had done a good job on the stories the first time around and knew how we wanted them to be.

I had forgotten the stages of dealing with a copy-edit, which, in my case, go approximately, NOOOOOOO, Are You Kidding Me, I Cannot Write For Toffee Not If It Was Ever So, Okay I Can Fix That If You Insist, Bored Now, Thank Goodness Somebody Noticed That, The Rest of This is Nonsense and I Will Not Do It, Really Bored Now, Really Why Did I Think I Could Write, Oh All RIGHT, This Is Very Annoying But You Have A Point, and I Am So Done Now.

I believe that copy-editors cannot catch everything that is actually wrong without also pointing out a certain percentage of things that are not wrong at all, and the writer just has to deal with it; but I had almost forgotten this, because it's been so long since I had anything published.

It was interesting to me that all the changes I balked at came down to either voice or viewpoint. The first and last of my Liavek stories are in the first person, and I was really not at all willing to change much of anything. The middle three stories and my sections of the new collaborative story are in third person, but there is in each one a particular viewpoint that dictates word choice and style generally. I was not altogether aware of this when I wrote them, but when I tried to make changes that on the surface seemed perfectly reasonable, it always came down to viewpoint.

On the whole I feel that all of the stories have held up remarkably well, and actually found myself becoming weepy both over the end of my last one, "A Necessary End," and Pat's last one, "The Levar's Night Out."

I am so pleased that this collection will be available as an e-book. I think the release date is in May, but I'll keep you apprised as things get closer.

Pamela

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

ritaxis.livejournal.com

I have certainly found that there's a lot of editorial madness going around with copyeditors attempting to change mountains of things that aren't incorrect, down to frequently changing them into things that are either incorrect themselves or things that are not incorrect but inappropriate. One oddity was an editor who, whenever there were multiple accepted usages, always changed mine, and al;ways changed it from the usage that appears first in the dictionary to one that appears second or third. And I just dealt with one who thought that the preliminary scenes of a story, which told of events twenty-five or so years before the rest, should therefore all be in past perfect. Also that the story must be from the point of view of the protagonist, and so therefore everything my omniscient narrator said that the protagonist didn't know had to be excised. And so on.

But mostly it's things like changing "got a break" to "caught a break." Both are correct: why change it?

From:

All the Niggling

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags