A Little Editing

Out of the blue came a request from a student from years past. She's finished the novel she workshopped in my class and is thinking about getting it edited "if it's worthy." Would I like to have a go?

Oh, how to answer that question! So many books are published--many not especially worthy in my opinion, but best sellers. 

I can't tell someone that paying for editing will assure their book is published Editing is expensive--though I suspect at $5 dollars a page for very picky line-editing, my prices aren't out of line.

Anyway, I suggested she pay me to edit the first chapter and she could decide if it was worth it to her to spring for the whole book.

She sent me said first chapter and I leaped in. And was surprised to find how addictive the work is. I always enjoyed editing--with a few exceptions when the writing was truly terrible. But this is a nice story that I think I can improve with some judicious tweaks.

We'll see if it proves to be something she wants to pursue.

 

On the Overuse of Exclamation Points!!!!!!!

 More snow but it doesn't matter to me-- I'm chained to the laptop trying to finish up a paid job editing a novel before plunging into the weekly critiques for my class.

This writer is especially addicted to exclamation points and I am slashing ruthlessly. Wanting a little backup for my slaughter, I turned to the internet and found these gems:

No more than 2 or 3 in 1oo,oo words. --Well, I wasn't quite that ruthless.

Using an exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke. -- Yep, you need to make the joke funny enough that you don't have to laugh. And you need to make the sentence exciting/compelling enough that the reader doesn't need you jabbing them in the ribs with an exclamation point.

And my personal favorite-- Use exclamation points sparingly! It's like wearing underpants on your head.

                                        

Whew!

Just finished up an paid editing job that's kept me working till midnight the past few nights. It's a 350 page memoir of the author's time in Vietnam. I actually like editing other folk's stuff. It's an interesting challenge trying to tidy up loose ends, catch mistakes, and suggest changes that improve the prose, all without losing the author's unique voice. In this case there was the bonus of learning all kinds of stuff about helicopters and jungle warfare and Vietnam era army slang.

I put in a lot of long consecutive hours on this edit--consecutive because I do better while the whole thing is fresh in my mind and I can catch repetitions.  And also because Josie wasn't here and it was raining and I wanted to get this job done before the rain quit and it was time to go pull weeds.  

These pictures remind me of the utter bliss of going to the beach when I was little. It was, in my early years, the only time I was allowed to go barefoot outside because of my grandmother's fear of hookworms back home.

 I remember the thrill of our first sight of dunes and beach and waves, pelicans skimming along in formation, crabs scuttling sideways to their holes, the enchanting murmur of the waves, and the fun of exploring the tidal pools.

I just hope someone on her beach staff is showing Josie how to make drip castles.   

Once more, thanks to Nancy, my co-granny, for sending these pics!

The Picky Editor

Five weeks into the critique workshop I lead, I'm editing about sixty pages a week -- three submissions of twenty pages each. I try to treat each one as if it were an edit-for-hire job -- something I do on occasion.  I read carefully, paying attention to grammar, spelling, and punctuation, of course, but mainly to the flow of the story -- is the writer choosing the best way to get his/her story across? Would this word or that phrasing be a better choice? How could this confusing bit be cleared up?

The folks in my class are all pretty knowledgeable in the basics. But sometimes we clash on some odd points. For example, two of the group are very fond of using colons. And they use them correctly. But, in my opinion, the colon is somewhat formal and breaks into the story by calling attention to itself, whereas a dash, a semi-colon, or perhaps a separate sentence would not.

The other recent point of contention was whether one should start a new paragraph with each change of speaker -- a fairly  common rule most of us learned early on and one which helps the reader to keep track of who's saying what. 

But, as one of the class pointed out, some well known writers break this rule, usually in order to show fast conversation, and may feature several different speakers in the same paragraph. 

True, enough. And some writers don't even use quotes for dialogue. Cormac McCarthy, for one. Me, for another, in  the historical sub-plots of Signs in the Blood and In a Dark Season. I just thought it seemed more in keeping with the story. And my editor didn't disagree.  

The bottom line? I try to convey to the folks in my class that my editorial opinion is just that. I suggest what sounds/looks better to me but the author has the last say. (Although, I don't feel that way about spelling. Sure, we could quibble over gray vs. grey --I prefer grey but use gray since it's the American standard spelling and I'm a standard American writer -- or theatre vs. theater  -- this gets more complicated. But, generally speaking, it's better to stick to standard spelling unless one wishes to be very avant garde and artistically obscure.)

Along with editing those sixty pages a week, I'm working my way through one last edit of The Devil's Brother, the first (and never published Elizabeth book,) applying the same stringent standards that I do for the class.

 I'm tweaking small things -- trying to get rid of some of the egregious smiling, grinning, and shrugging, along with lots of actually's and finally's. There are big issues I wish weren't there but to fix them would require rewriting the whole thing and I'm not going to do that. 

I'm hoping to self-publish it as an e-book sometime in March --I've got about fifty pages to go and then I have to see what Amazon has to offer with its KDP program. Then, once I get  that done, I'll get to work on the Birdie collection.

Never a dull moment.

Our Changing Language

In the critique workshop I'm leading, I edit about sixty pages each week so my inner English teacher is on high alert these days.  I had to shake my head when I recently saw someone on social media talk about a segway from one topic to another. I'm pretty sure the person wasn't talking about riding one of those funny two-wheeled people movers but just didn't know how to spell segue  -- which is, indeed, pronounced seg way and means a smooth transition from one thing to another. And was likely the reason for the name of the people movers.

In the course of my editing, I recently encountered a sentence like this: Hopefully, it won't rain. In my mind this is incorrect. What does that adverb hopefully modify anyway? A better sentence would be I hope it won't rain. But the first sentence and its ilk are common usage -- so I checked with several grammar sites, most of which simply throw up their (figurative) hands and say, yes, that usage of hopefully is technically incorrect but it's now acceptable since  everyone uses it. 

Okay, then. I'll let it slide. But what about the person who refers to the glass in a window being decimated?  As a one-time Latin student, I seem to recall decimated originally meant killing one in ten as a punishment for a group -- a nasty practice the Romans employed to ensure discipline -- and the word came to mean destroying a portion of something.  Can one decimate a window, I wondered.

Yep. The one in ten is the quaint historical definition, Now decimate means destroying a large portion or entirely. 

Hmm -- glad I checked. It seems I'm aging out of the grammar and usage game -- stuck back in ancient Rome.

Who knows -- maybe before long segway with a lower-case S will replace segue.

But they will have to pry the Oxford comma from my cold, dead hands.

Son of the Red Pen

But wait! There are more misused words and phrases that have come to my attention since my last post on the subject.

Let's begin with this from one of my readers: A new bride wrote of her husband, "I love him with all my heart and sole."

Soul is probably what she meant to say. Unless the happy pair are foot fetishists. I know, I shouldn't judge.

After the Women's March I saw an irate comment on Facebook complaining about the fowl language on some of the signs.  No fair blaming it on the chickens, my dear -- what you mean is foul.

Here's a two-fer: Reek havoc and run amuck. Reek means to give off an offensive odor -- the correct word in this phrase is wreak, meaning to cause.  

And running amuck implies that one is bogged down in mud or something worse. Running amok (From the Malay -- evidently something Malays were thought to be prone to) is to rampage uncontrollably.

Then there's reticent -- which some folks seem to confuse with hesitant and/or reluctant -- as in She was reticent to go along with the plan.  Not quite. Reticent is more akin to shy or reserved -- as in When we asked her opinion of the nominee, her reticent nature meant that we learned nothing.

So, a new month and my little notebook is ready. Feel free to share any  similar missteps!

Two Completely Unrelated Things

This lovely bloom is, to my way of thinking, as pretty as many an orchid or fancy tulip. Pale chartreuse petals, flamed with orange -- and a mop of cream colored -- what are those? Anthers? Stamens? Whatever -- it's a gorgeous flower. And just now, the forest floor is littered with them -- the blossoms of the tall tulip poplar trees that grow in such profusion here.

That was one thing.

Here's another: A few posts back, Merisi asked who was responsible for incorporating all the changes from the edited manuscript into an electronic copy. I didn't know and emailed my editor -- who also didn't know for sure. ( She knew that she didn't want to do it and I knew that I for sure didn't.) But Herself promised to find out and get back to me.

Monday morning, true to her word, here came the email -- a forward from one of the folks in the Production department who said: "The compositor does it. I think they contract the work out. It used to be housewives in Pennsylvania, but now I think they send it overseas."

I find this fascinating. What are those Pennsylvania housewives doing now -- are they greeters at Wal-Mart? massage therapists? mystery writers?

And where 'overseas' are these outsourced compositors? I guess an in-depth knowledge of English wouldn't actually be necessary -- all the compositor really has to do is understand the proofreading marks (something I'm still working on.)

Further proof that it takes a village to turn out a book.

It's BAA-ACK!

. . . all 401 pages of The Day of Small Things came Fed-Exing back into my life yesterday afternoon.

I'd just returned from a trip to town -- P.O., bank, recycling center, grocery, and a cup of coffee with the blogger known as estaminet -- who is in the area visiting family and is as charming as her blog.

Before I'd even unloaded the groceries or fed the dogs (it was past the sacred four o'clock chow time, they kept telling me), I had to get into the package and flip through the pages, in shameless search for Herself's words of blue ink praise.

There were a gratifying number of them -- as well as some very nice comments from the copy editor (in red pencil). And evidently, no major changes called for, no more of those 'Flat!' warnings or exhortations to 'Milk it!' -- meaning to stretch an exciting moment even farther.

Now I have to settle down to the painstaking task of reading every word as if I'd never seen it before in an attempt to catch typos and the like. I have to consider carefully if I've phrased things as well as I might, if Miss Birdie sounds like Miss Birdie, if Calven sounds like a modern day teenager.

I have to polish this baby till it shines and I have to get it back to Herself by June 22. Very doable, since as I said, there don't seem to be any major changes called for.

Oh, I know a few places where I'd like to insert a paragraph or two but on the whole, as I buzzed through the pages last night in search of every last blue ink comment, I kept thinking, "Hey! This is pretty good! Ooh, that was a nice bit there. Wow! Did I write that? Cool!"

Now, a few weeks past the major re-do of the story, I'm able to appreciate the new shape of the novel without thinking about the part I removed. And I can honestly say -- "Yep, I'm right pleased with Birdie's book!"