Patti O'Shea's Blog

Copy edits are done and I’m tired. My only goal for the day is to get to bed really early and catch up on some sleep. Not a lofty aim, but a necessary one.

I mentioned this before, but I always forget how much work copy edits are. They come and I have 2.5 weeks and I think, wow, I won’t need all that time. I’ll get them done early and get back to the WIP. Then in the first few days, I realize that mailing time comes off the 2.5 weeks, but that’s still 2 weeks. I still should be able to get them done early and 2 pages of copy editor (CE) queries aren’t that much.

I start with an initial read through, making the easy/quick changes that the CE has mentioned. That took care of about half the queries, which is good, but I start to get an inkling that I’m not going to get the manuscript turned around in a week, especially when the one day I think it will take expands to three days.

Next, I needed to add the changes I’d made to the story after I’d turned it in. Nothing impacted the plot or the structure, but there was some tightening up, some changes of phrasing. I expected to have this done in one day, too. Again, I was wrong. I think it ended up taking 2 days, but only because there was a big stretch without many of these little adjustments.

The next run through was to hit the harder copy editor queries. By this point, I’ve got five days left before the copy edits need to be sent out. So much for early, right? This ends up taking 2 full weekend days, leaving me with only 3 days for a final polishing read through. I used all of those days. I swear, I don’t know why I can’t not use a few words/phrases every sentence. Okay, slight exaggeration, but wouldn’t it be nice if the word processing software would throw a window up that says, You’ve used the word “still” fifty times, are you sure you want to use it again? Then I would realize what I was doing and cut the word. I have a few of those kinds of words and I spent a lot of time crossing them out. Sigh.

I finished last night, the night before it needed to go to Fed Ex, around 7:30 or so. I had to write a dedication/acknowledgements page, too. Okay, I didn’t have to, but I wanted to. That’s hard for me.

Oh! And all along with the copy edits, I’m sharpening and resharpening my colored pencil because the point would get too blunt too quickly and I needed a sharp point so that the changes I wrote in were clear. On previous books, I’d searched for colored mechanical pencil lead, but only came up with red, which I’m not allowed to use because that’s what the CE uses. Well, Wednesday I only did a search for colored pencils on Amazon–not lead–and discovered there’s a collection of colored lead mechanical pencils with built-in sharpeners. Argh! If only I’d found them 2 weeks ago! I ordered them, but watch, my publisher will change to electronic copy edits for my next book and I’ll never use them. That wouldn’t surprise me at all.

I don’t know why, but I always forget how much work copy edits are. It’s like I develop amnesia or something. When I receive them, it goes something like this. Wow, 2 weeks, I should be able to get these done in a week and mail them back early. So because there’s so much time, I don’t rush through my first read through where I handle the easy copy editor questions. At some point while I’m plowing my way through the manuscript, it begins to occur to me that it’s taking longer than I thought.

It’s okay, I reassure myself. The second pass will be faster. There’s only a few changes I made in the electronic copy that I need to input. I should be able to get this done in one night. This is when it dawns on me that I’ve greatly underestimated how much time it will take. I only made it halfway through the story on this second pass.

Now it’s day 2 of this pass. I suddenly realize that I don’t have 8 more days like I thought, it’s only 7 because I have to bundle the manuscript up to be mailed back at work the next day, which means I don’t have that extra day to work on it like I thought I had. Panic begins to creep in as I measure how much I’ve accomplished versus how much I have left to accomplish. A clock begins ticking in my head.

This is where I was at yesterday. Luckily, day 2 on the changes I’d made to my document went faster than I anticipated and I even managed to get to bed early. That clock, though, is still running in my head and I’m trying to figure out how much time it’s going to take to do everything I need to do.

So far there’s been one big discrepancy that I’ve found. The first time Kel builds a fire, the fireplace has doors. The second time, there’s a screen. I’ve fixed that.

On the CE To Do List still are:

Agent’s suggestions
Reworking the first fight scene to add knives (I volunteered to do this for the cover)
The harder Copy Editor queries
Duplicate words
Final read through

Copy edits always seem to take me longer than I think they will. My plan for the weekend was to do an initial read through and handle the simple queries, but I didn’t make it. I still have about a third of the book to get through. Part of it was that I participated in a plot group session and that took up a lot of time, but part of it is that it just takes longer to read through the manuscript than I think it will. Always.

Back when I wasn’t writing and I read a lot, I could make it through a single title story in about 6-8 hours, depending on the author and the amount of dialogue she used. Or the amount of description. I always skim description because I hate reading it and I have my own pictures of the story in my head anyway. Somehow, I always think that my reading time for a novel written by someone else should equal the time it takes to do an initial read through of my own work. I always seem to forget that I’m going to stop and pick at my stuff.

One of my biggest problems is repeated words. I love it when the copy editor (CE) marks that stuff for me because no matter how carefully I watch out for it, I never seem to see them myself. I don’t know why. Fortunately, the CE who went through In the Darkest Night did do this. The CE also pointed out my page where almost every sentence had the word had in it. Reading that made me cringe, especially because I didn’t see it myself. How could I miss that? Zoinks!

Anyway, I will continue to do my initial read through tomorrow and hopefully finish up so I can start the second round. First pass is just general stuff, the easy things that are quick fixes. The other passes through copy edits are more intensive for me and I know those will take longer.