{"id":774,"date":"2010-05-11T17:16:22","date_gmt":"2010-05-11T23:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=774"},"modified":"2010-05-11T17:16:22","modified_gmt":"2010-05-11T23:16:22","slug":"copy-edits-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=774","title":{"rendered":"Copy Edits Done…"},"content":{"rendered":"

….Almost.\u00a0\u00a0 Still a few more things to be done before shipping them back to NYC.\u00a0\u00a0 I need to rewrite the Dedication, write the Acknowledgments, and run back through the text to catch a couple of things I think I may have done wrong.\u00a0\u00a0 Anyway, tomorrow I mail them off, then there’s choir practice, and Thursday is our son’s math final at ACC (he needs a special trip in and back out) and then Friday I can start on the maps for Kings<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Or rather, the expansion of the main map westward to include Fin Panir, where some mumble-mumble plot will take place.\u00a0\u00a0 (Does it matter?\u00a0 Oh yes!<\/em>)<\/p>\n

This set of copy edits was more difficult than some others, almost certainly due to the CE’s unfamiliarity with any of the previous books and my personal stylistic choices.\u00a0\u00a0 Looking at the marks, I realized how differently I write now from how I wrote papers in college and grad school, and nonfiction later on.\u00a0\u00a0 That began with the first Paks books, but the development has continued–I’m not writing in familiar American vernacular.\u00a0 The Paks books won’t allow it.<\/p>\n

I don’t want to be perceived as one of those writers who thinks her every word is a perfectly faceted diamond or ruby, set in 24k gold by a master jeweller.\u00a0\u00a0 Faberge I’m not, and I know it.\u00a0 But I also don’t want the feel of a Paks book to be compromised by someone else’s taste.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You, the Paksworld readers, don’t deserve that.\u00a0\u00a0 You may think I didn’t get something right–and if it’s something I didn’t get right that’s a fair cop–but if it’s something someone else put in, I don’t want the blame for it.<\/p>\n

Which means editing the copy editing is a very tricky process.\u00a0\u00a0 There’s no problem accepting corrections to misspelled words, missing quotation marks, and obvious errors.\u00a0\u00a0 But when it comes to matters of style and taste, I have to tread a wary path.\u00a0 Sometimes the change is a good one.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes it has (to my eye and ear) a neutral effect–it’s different, but it’s not better or worse.\u00a0\u00a0 I tend to halve those, giving 50% to the copy editor and 50% to me.\u00a0 Sometimes, it’s worse.\u00a0\u00a0 Those I reject, even if that means a page covered with “stet” and little dots under the thing to be stetted.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And then there are the other things–things not marked by the copy editor, that I now see as less than they could be.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s a long, tedious, painstaking process (yes, you can express sympathy…do that before the book comes out, please, so if you hate the book I’ve already had the sympathy.)<\/p>\n

However, it’s done and we finally turned on the air conditioner.\u00a0\u00a0 R- brought home a roast chicken from the supermarket.\u00a0\u00a0 I will finish up tonight before 10 pm and go to bed before midnight for the first time in over a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

….Almost.\u00a0\u00a0 Still a few more things to be done before shipping them back to NYC.\u00a0\u00a0 I need to rewrite the Dedication, write the Acknowledgments, and run back through the text to catch a couple of things I think I may have done wrong.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,52,5],"tags":[62,107,50],"class_list":["post-774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-editing","category-the-writing-life","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-the-writing-life","tag-writer-as-editor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774"}],"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=774"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":776,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions\/776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}