Revision and Whatnot

A busy month of travel and editing...and the two combined. With no pending interviews and little time to get really creative with my "new blog approach," this is just a personal reflection.

A while back I detailed the editorial process, which goes in order like this: macro edits, line edits, copy edits, design sets, pass pages....Last week I received the copy edits on FORGIVEN, and at this stage I've learned to be both excited and anxious. This is it, the big kahuna, the final chance, the last time in which I have the opportunity to make any "significant" changes to the manuscript. After the copy edits, it's all just teeny-weeny changes, like spelling mistakes and typos; no big scenes or even sentences.

The process is all electronic at Penguin. We use MS Word and the track changes feature, and the pages can get very colorful with our different comments. My line edits were really colorful this time. I had lots of changes at the line edit stage. So when I received the copy edits, I was even more nervous than with FAITHFUL, because there's a bit more complex mystery in FORGIVEN, a bit more subtlety, and I didn't want to mess things up.

Two days in a car, my sweet hubby at the wheel, me reading aloud from the copy edit manuscript, red pen in hand.

He, the left-brained scientist; me, searching for things that didn't work.

Result: an editorial dream team.

Can I arrange a car trip with him every time I write a book and get to this stage, pretty please? Only time and you, dear readers, will tell whether this novel works on the page. But I sure loved the process.

On a different note, I'll be attending Darcy Pattison's "novel revision workshop" this weekend in Texas, and I'm so excited. She wants us all to read two craft books that I have on my shelf and love: Noah Lukeman's The First Five Pages, and Renni Browne and Dave King's Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

On a final note, just because, a pic I snapped the day before we left Montana: a frosty dawn (yes, that's frost on the lawn) out our front window.

Next time: what I learned whilst sitting at Darcy's feet.