A long, arduous process

Back when I was young -- read "naive" -- I thought writing a book was pretty simple for authors. You sit down, you start at the beginning and end at the end, send it to your publisher, and they publish it. (Pardon me while I choke on a snort.)

Writing The Assassin and Deep Cover was the easy part of the job. I sent TA in, the editor said, "I love it! Oh, and here are the changes I want." I revised it according to her requests, and just as I was finishing it, I got the news -- that editor was gone and I had a new one. I sent in the revisions to her and she said, "Oh, I love it . . . but it needs just a few more changes." Then a few more. Then a few more.

I can't remember whether we went through four or five sets of revisions on that book -- I know, I'm probably in denial. But finally -- finally, thank you, God! -- we were done.

Well, not quite. Then came the line edit. This is where the editor reads through the manuscript, requesting or making (mostly) small changes -- this word for that one, tighten this sentence, clarify that paragraph. Not a lot of fun for me, but not nearly as bad as a complete revision. And finally -- thank you again, God! -- we were through.

Almost.

After that came the copy edit. That's where a copy editor -- usually a freelancer -- goes through the manuscript. He/she makes sure everything adheres to "house style" -- for instance, some publishers use the serial comma (Selena, Tony, and Mutt) while some don't (Selena, Tony and Mutt). Some publishers prefer certain spellings -- "dryly" versus "drily" or "broach" versus "brooch." The CE also checks for consistency, making sure your heroine doesn't have green eyes on page 2 and blue ones on page 200, and for accuracy -- if you say the FBI was established in 1932, you can bet she's going to check it.

Ideally, a copy editor does her job without interfering with the way you tell your story, but not all CEs are ideal. Some want to leave their mark on a book, and some can drive an author right up the wall. I know an author who once had a CE change the distance between Dallas and Houston because she thought "it sounded better." That same author had a CE who changed the dialogue of an 80-year-old Oklahoma granny who'd gone only through the fifth grade so she sounded as if she'd graduated from Oxford.

Another author friend once got a three-page letter from a copy editor, detailing all the tremendous problems in the legal aspect of the story, but never fear, though the author clearly had no understanding of the Constitution of the United States of America, the CE had discovered a way in which all this wrong could be put right.

The problem was, the CE was wrong. Her legal expertise had apparently been gained by watching far too much television, while the author's legal advice had come from a federal agent with nearly twenty years experience, a district attorney, and the Attorney General for the State of Arkansas, where the book took place. Sheesh.

So after the copy edit . . . are we done yet? she asks pitifully. (Yes, when I was a kid and we traveled by car, I did often whine, "Are we there yet?") Not quite, though the next step is generally painless. The page proofs (or galleys, justifieds, or unjustfieds) are a final read-through of the book. It's your absolute last chance to catch any mistakes -- yours, your editor's, or your copy editor's -- and to make any final changes. With some publishers, page proofs look like manuscript pages -- standard paper, double-spaced -- while with others it looks like a regular book page centered on an 8X11 piece of paper.

And then . . . yea!! That's it. No more looking at that baby until you get a real, honest-to-God book to hold in your hands. And if you're like me, by then you're so sick of it that you can't bring yourself to open it again for a long, long time.

Sometimes naivete is good, you know? Rachel9:37 AM