Yesterday I finally (!) got the copy edits boxed up, taped up, and ready to go when (out of the blue, literally) a storm landed on top of us and for over an hour we had lightning, wind, and (wonderfully) rain.\u00a0 The power flickered on and off and I declined to go out in it, risking the manuscript, until things settled down, which they finally did.\u00a0\u00a0 Then I drove the 20-something miles to the Kinko’s\/FedEx place and handed over the box to the nice fellow keeping the doors open until closing time, and drove back home, lighter in heart and pocket both.\u00a0 (You really don’t want to know what it costs to send over 850 pages of paper ‘overnight’ to New York City from central Texas…)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now I can concentrate on the new book(s) again, and come Monday, Production will get its hands on the manuscript and start doing what it does, putting it into shape for the printer.\u00a0\u00a0 In the meantime, due to the copy editor having turned it in so late, someone else’s books moved into the slot originally reserved for mine, and mine is shoving into spaces in the schedule that originally belonged to someone else’s book(s).<\/p>\n
Lessons learned–I can no longer do copy edits after midnight.\u00a0 I was trying to do them as fast as possible, but discovered on re-check (which is usually fast and painless) that I had made a lot of mistakes myself.\u00a0 In the words of the old Book of Common Prayer (revised for writers), I had stetted those things which ought not to be stetted, and left unstetted those things which ought to be stetted (wait, I think that’s reversed.\u00a0 Anyway.)\u00a0\u00a0 Judging by where the waves of errors were, they occurred in those post-midnight sessions and one “interrupted by conversation” session.\u00a0\u00a0 So I had to check the whole manuscript again, twice, finishing up a solid week and a bit after starting.<\/p>\n
Today, however, I have other commitments, and though I slept until almost 8 am (amazement!\u00a0 Actual 8 hours of sleep last night!)\u00a0 I have two full days of Stuff, mostly away from here.\u00a0\u00a0 So I’d better quit loafing here and get at it.<\/p>\n
But on Monday it’s “back to book.”\u00a0\u00a0 I hope Book (either one) is in a cooperative mood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday I finally (!) got the copy edits boxed up, taped up, and ready to go when (out of the blue, literally) a storm landed on top of us and for over an hour we had lightning, wind, and (wonderfully) rain.\u00a0 The power flickered on and off and I declined to go out in it, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,5],"tags":[20,31],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editing","category-the-writing-life","tag-progress-report","tag-the-book-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":350,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions\/350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}