{"id":203,"date":"2016-07-30T22:54:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T03:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/?p=203"},"modified":"2016-07-30T22:54:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T03:54:00","slug":"copy-edit-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/2016\/07\/30\/copy-edit-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Copy Edit Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

So.\u00a0\u00a0 Copy Edits for Cold Welcome<\/em> arrived Friday afternoon, and this morning I cleared off half the kitchen table and laid out my work space.\u00a0 Stack of unread pages.\u00a0 Place to put pages read.\u00a0 Dictionary.\u00a0\u00a0 My Sekrit Decoder ring to details in the book.\u00a0\u00a0 Removed Ego and put it in the fridge freezer (oh, come on<\/em>.\u00a0 You don’t believe tha<\/em>t, do you?\u00a0\u00a0 Ego is still in my head, and I have my fist on its collar.\u00a0\u00a0 If you can’t freeze your ego, you have to have it subdued in some way.)<\/p>\n

Like many writers, I have a wary approach to copy editors.\u00a0\u00a0 They do this for a living all day long, just like I make things up for a living all day long.\u00a0\u00a0 They are apt to point out, for instance, that I am misusing “onto” (yes, I did.)\u00a0 I looked it up.\u00a0 In three different places, to be certain of that.\u00a0\u00a0 I could argue that it was in dialogue, and my character was speaking as many of us do speak in that context at hand, but…no.\u00a0 Point to copy editor, good catch.\u00a0\u00a0 On the other hand, that “the” stuck in here, and the “and” stuck in there?\u00a0 Style choice.\u00a0 STET.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I try to minimize “the” usage, to use it only when I need the definite article.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Some CEs are not so picky.\u00a0 (They’re picky, but they have different standards.)<\/p>\n

I am, at this point, about 21.6% of the way through the copy edits.\u00a0\u00a0 I read every word of every page with attention, because even a copy editor’s attention may flag and something may be missed.\u00a0 (Something was.\u00a0 I fixed it. Point to me.)\u00a0\u00a0 My eyes hurt, my vision’s blurred a bit, and I’m going to bed now.<\/p>\n

Oh yeah, NewBook?\u00a0 It’s skipping along dallying in the floral maze, but still accumulating plot points at a reasonable rate.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s just over 37,000 words.\u00a0\u00a0 It will be neglected until I get the copy edits done, except for a daily short walk in the park on a leash.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s most alpha alpha reader (who saw a version several thousand words ago) says it has a slow spot but is otherwise doing well.\u00a0\u00a0 Slow spots in a rough draft can be fixed later.\u00a0 One maintains forward momentum if one has a lick of sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So.\u00a0\u00a0 Copy Edits for Cold Welcome arrived Friday afternoon, and this morning I cleared off half the kitchen table and laid out my work space.\u00a0 Stack of unread pages.\u00a0 Place to put pages read.\u00a0 Dictionary.\u00a0\u00a0 My Sekrit Decoder ring to details in the book.\u00a0\u00a0 Removed Ego and put it in the fridge freezer (oh, come Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,10,5],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-progress","category-the-writing-life","category-vatta","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}