I Really Made That Mistake Eleven Times?

By Claire Booth

I got the copy edited manuscript for Another Man’s Ground four days ago. This is the stage when a person of exacting standards and keen grammatical skill scrutinizes every word, punctuation mark, and fact in 338 pages of text. This person is my best friend.

I’m reading through everything – accepting changes, evaluating suggestions, answering questions. I’m about halfway through and so far, it’s become apparent that I don’t know how to punctuate around an em dash. And that I miscounted the number of days that transpire between two significant plot points. And that I call one character different names in different chapters (Bill or Lee – pick one!).

This might sound like painful reading, but I love it. I am very, very picky about details and grammar, and I enjoy delving back into my book at that level. It’s great to have a copy editor who has the same (or greater) level of obsessiveness as I do. I also appreciate not looking like an idiot when the book comes out.

And if a book copy editor can keep a writer from looking stupid, that’s nothing compared with what a newspaper copy editor can do. Having a fictional character with two different names is one thing, but imagine spelling the name of the city’s mayor wrong. On the front page. Or mixing up the numbers of a phone hot line that the copy editors catch because they called it right before deadline and discovered it went to somebody’s Aunt Marge and not the animal shelter featured in the news story.

I don’t think I ever spelled the name of a politician in one of my cities wrong, but I did once spend an entire breaking police story writing that a priceless Aston Martin was stolen from an airplane hanger. Now, a “hangar” is where you park an airplane. A “hanger” is what you put a coat on. Thankfully, one of the best copy editors in the business caught it, and my front page story ran error-free.

Who can ask for a better friend than that?

Boy do I feel dumb

by: Joelle Charbonneau

This week, I've been working on copyedits for GRADUATION DAY, the third book in The Testing Trilogy.  Copyedits are always an interesting time in the production of a novel.  The book has been revised and revised and revised again.  My editor, agent and I finally believe the book is in great shape. Then the book goes off to the shadowy figure known as the copyeditor to make sure all commas are in the right place and all the spellings in book 3 actually match the two that came before.  A great copyeditor also checks for overused words and makes suggestions about any repetitive phrases that could be eliminated.

So it is with a great deal of joy and angst that I approached opening the package with the copyedited manuscript. Joy because the book is getting close to being spiffed and polished and ready for readers and anguish because the pages will be filled with lots and lots of notes and tons of little tweaks that make me think...wow...why didn't I think of that in the first place?

Copyedits (when done by an amazing copy editor, of which I have been blessed with) make me feel dumb.  Not the comma part, because the one thing I have learned in this writing process is that every publishing house seems to have a different idea of where commas should actually go.  So the added or removed punctuation doesn't phase me.  But the rest....

Yikes.

All the notes and the suggestions and the polite requests for changes make me grateful that I have a copyeditor.  It also makes me feel stupid.  Very, very stupid. Like I failed ever grammar class that I'd taken in high school.

The funny thing is, I know that's not the case.  In fact, I know that often I have far less notes on these pages than I'm expecting.  But it is the nature of a writer to think that we should be able to do everything without help.  That we should be perfect.  That we shouldn't need an editor or a copyeditor or anyone else who reads the story throughout production.  Because the story is ours.  As the storyteller -we should be able to make the story fabulous all by ourselves.

And that's wrong.  Yes, the story is ours, but the best thing about writing a story is watching the process of the story being turned into a book.  And not just any book...the best book it can possibly be.  And that's what all those amazing people helping shape the story are for.  My copyeditor makes me feel dumb and incredibly grateful to have her working on my book.  I mean...the book is SO much better for her.  And my editor...well, let's just say I am thanking my lucky stars I get to work with her because she is brilliant.  Here's hoping she liked my work enough in this trilogy to work with me in the future because I'm not sure if my work could ever be as strong without her.

Writers feel dumb a lot.  We feel stupid when we don't know what comes next in the story.  We feel like complete idiots when we're in the middle of writing a book and we are certain it is the worst book ever.  We think we're not so bright when we read the manuscript and think the story might not be as bad as we originally thought.  We bang our heads against walls when we get editorial notes that point out glaring errors that we swear we should have spotted.  And we even feel stupid when the book hits shelves and readers pick it up because we're certain someone is going to finally understand how much we don't know and that we're total frauds.

But you know what?  Despite that, I feel like the smartest person in the world for being in this business.  Why?  Because I get to work with people who make my work look sharper, more focused and just plain better than it was before.  How cool is that?

So, as I finish these last couple pages marked with green pencil and lovely notes from my wonderful copyeditor, I am incredibly thankful that I have such an amazing production team helping me shape this book.  Because the dumber I feel, the luckier I know I am.

A day of rest...

by: Joelle Charbonneau

Happy Easter. Or Happy Passover depending on your religious affiliation. Or perhaps I should just say – happy Sunday. The day of rest.

Writers don’t get many days of rest. We have to sit at the computer when other people are frolicking through the tulips or being fed grapes while laying on a chaise lounge. (Ok…maybe the whole grape thing is just what we think other people are doing, but you get my point.) Writers don’t punch a clock, which makes it the best and worst job in the world. We can set our own schedules. Trouble with that is that lots of other things get in the way because…well…we get to set our own schedules. We can just say “I’ll do X now and write later.” It’s easy to put off the writing because there will always be time for it later. But, for me, the more I put writing off, the harder it is to get back to it.

This is why when I’m working on a manuscript I write 7 days a week. I try for a minimum of 1000 words a day. Depending on the project, I write much faster, but I never count on it, because…well…life happens. So does other work stuff. Last week, I mentioned all the other things that an author has to do. Well, I’ve had to do a lot of them in the past week and a half. Most notably, I had to proof the typeset pages for Murder for Choir and do copy edits for Skating On The Edge. Both are very important steps in the process of getting a book from the screen to the shelf. The only problem with these steps are they interrupt my 7 day a week goal on my current work in progress.

What’s a girl to do?

Well, this girl got those jobs done as efficiently as possible in order to get back to her manuscript. I sent copy edits for Skating On The Edge back to my editor Friday morning and when the tot took a nap, I opened up my computer fully preparing to launch back into my manuscript after reading my new e-mails. That’s when I learned copy edits for THE TESTING would be arriving yesterday.** I sharpened my pencil and got ready to work…but…UPS never arrived.

Huh…

Now what? Technically, I should get back to that work in progress, but knowing that I’m going to be interrupted on Monday makes me do something I almost never do. I’m taking the day off.

Time for a glass of wine. Some laughs with family. Watching baseball on the television and enjoying my son searching for Easter Eggs. Today is a holiday and I plan on celebrating it to the fullest.

So, to all of you my friends, have a wonderful Sunday. May the Easter Bunny bring you lots of chocolate rabbits (which is kind of a strange tradition when you think about the fact the Easter Bunny is bringing you one of his friends to eat) and lots of wonderful moments with your families.


**And for all you sports fans keeping track – YES, these books come out at very different times. MURDER FOR CHOIR (July 3rd, Berkley), SKATING ON THE EDGE (Oct. 2nd, Minotaur), THE TESTING (April 2013, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). The publishing process is very different for each, which just goes to show that publishing likes to keep you on your toes!