Copy Edits!

Copy edits arrived this morning.   The work space is set up now, with dictionary and Chicago Manual of Style at hand, and several sharp pencils.   This is the *next to last* step for me (checking page proofs is the last)  and one that’s very important.  Even so, if you find a typo in the final version…consider chaos theory and don’t have a cow.   I will do my best.  Editor did her best.  Copy editor did their best.  And the final proof readers (including but not limited to me) did their best too.

Meanwhile, I will be in the kitchen, working on the copy edits, as quickly as possible.  Alas, not writing new blog posts.  Or stories.  Or anything but copy edit checking.

There was a DoS attack on the servers holding my stuff, so the sites were down for awhile yesterday but are back up.  Although this site thinks it’s new and I haven’t posted here before.  Odd.  It’ll learn.  The other blogs may be the same but I don’t have time to check them all today.  One per day is the most I can give them.

9 thoughts on “Copy Edits!

  1. Elizabeth, I’ve just checked Paksworld blog for you – it is fine – by copying your post to there as a comment.

  2. And my comment here has come through immediately on automatic visa waiver, so that’s fine post-cyber-attack too.

    1. Good news. I was deep in the copy edits on Saturday, so didn’t even look here. There was reason to trudge warily through them…some major stumbling blocks left that both Editor and I missed.

      Like the 92 page chapter. And now I know the correct way to indicate to Production that you’re splitting a monster chapter into three. (And best of all…the Boss gave me permission–me, an author! permission–to use a *colored pencil* if I had one. Boy, do I! I picked a nice, staid, dark red for that particular job, and yes, I knew she did not mean for me to use it all over the rest of the STET and delete and so on marks.

      CE pointed out several highly embarrassing things that I have no idea how they happened. I have a Name List for this (as for other) books to be sure I spell them the same way. And yet…not on earlier rewrites, but on this one, several characters got name changes that make no particular sense. And not all the way through, just in one or two pages. Also there were reversed scenes after block moves, such that someone left a town before they arrived. And no, that’s not in the physics of the Vatta Universe.

  3. I was just checking today to see about this as I thought this was close to when you thought they might arrive.

    1. And now I’m close to finishing them. A few more things to double-check on, etc. I try to work with, and not against, copy edits, when they’re not horrendous (and this was not at all horrendous) but some things I feel strongly about and do “stet.”

  4. Copy Edits are on their way to NYC. Shipped them off late this afternoon. We’re going to a circus tonight (local Chamber of Commerce has hired a small circus to come to our small town–so of course we bought tickets. Didn’t make the 6 pm show because of not finishing the copy edits *completely* until almost 4 pm, but we’ll make the 7:30. So I’m outa here for now.

  5. Copy Edits arrived in NYC and WHEW! Meanwhile trying to get other things done with zero energy (having spent the last penny in the energy bank doing copy edits.) There’s more to do on Rent House before it’s completely ready, and other stuff here needs doing, and….I keep faceplanting and sleeping for hours and not having the energy to cook a real meal.

    This too shall pass. Eventually. The circus was fun, but we were out of energy by the intermission so we bailed, came home, and had homemade chocolate chip/coconut cookies (instead of the cotton candy, popcorn, hot dogs, etc. at the circus.) A cooler front blew in today, so maybe the dragginess will prove to have been some hot, humid days.

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