Thursday 4 September 2008

Copy That, Red Leader

One copy edit later and I'm amazed that, after all my rewrites and re-readings, there were still lots of little things that were spotted and that required amending. Most of them were the previously mentioned Americanisms (making sure they were consistent) but there were others that, when pointed out, caused a "how did I miss that" moment, including:

- having one character in two different places at the same time. Fortunately he was a bit-player and didn't object too much when he was written out of one scene,

- a paragraph that, no matter how many times it was read, made absolutely no sense whatsoever; although I'm sure it made perfect sense when I wrote it.

Now they've all been tidied up and the ms is back with the publisher.

Next steps are tyesetting and finalising the cover. Ooh I've gone all tingly with anticipation.

3 comments:

Sue Guiney said...

Hi, I found you via Caroline's magic widget. Your posting hit the mark. My 1st novel was published in May and although it was proofread by lots of people lots of times, there STILL was a very awkward typo on an early page, and at least one other later on. I pulled my hair out when I saw it (and several readers mentioned it to me!), but I've been told it's almost unavoidable. Good luck with it, though. Exciting!

BB said...

Thanks Sue,

It's probably a case of "it's not the amount of typos but how obvious they are!"

Andy Byers said...

- a paragraph that, no matter how many times it was read, made absolutely no sense whatsoever; although I'm sure it made perfect sense when I wrote it.

Mirabile dictu, you were actually channeling James Joyce at the time. :)