I am done with the copy edit on The Black Ship. It turned out to be a relatively clean manuscript, which was nice. I made some changes and tinkerings, and of course I had to deal with the speech pattern of character S mentioned in the last post.

What's very bad about receiving this now is that it puts me into editor mode when I want to be in creative crazy writer mode. It's going to take a bit to take off that hat and let myself sink back into the Turning Tide without constantly checking myself and saying no! That's crap! Stop!  Or that's the wrong word (who cares? After the first edit, that word may not exist. No one polishes words at the drafting level you stupid editor-ghoul on my shoulder).  Deep breath.  Okay, so that will take some time.

The good thing though is knowing that this really was a rough rough draft when I finally finished it and it took a lot of revision to get it into shape. Which gives me some more evidence that indeed I can do it so if The Turning Tide really is a huge steaming pile, I will be able to make it a book eventually. That does help, because I've reached the middle where all is dark and all is crap and all I can do is hitch up the hip-waders and grab the rubber duckie and try to get up the shit-river before I drown.

Some things the copy editor caught and I didn't. At one point there was a second ship sitting at harbor during a particular scene. I took it out. But there was still a random (and confusing) reference to it. Once I flipped the bow and the stern of the ship in the middle of a scene. Gerry started out as a girl and turned into a boy. He's all boy now. And many other things. Some smaller, some larger, some head-slappingly stupid. 

There were a couple of things that my editor wants (not to be confused with my copy editor--both marked this manuscript) that I do not agree with. But I tried to look at why she wants those changes and then shored up some weak spots to see if it works better for her.  I expect she'll let me know if it doesn't work well enough.

But that's a major step done. Next up are the proofs and then it's to ARCs and getting bound and sold and shipped . . . . Wow. Hard to believe it.

Well, must jet off to the grocery store.

So first  . . . A hearty craaaaaaaaaap!!!!

So the copy edits are going fine, going fine, going fine . . . uh, stop.  Note from editor:  Di, suddenly your character S, who spoke the language brokenly only fifty pages ago, is now speaking like she's a native. Fix it.

First reaction. Noooooooo!!!!! Craaaaaaaap! (because of course the note comes at the head of lengthy dialog between character S and character T, and so much must be fixed.

Second reaction: How to fix it? Go back and make her language skills smoother? Or go through the next hundred pages making them less so? Guess which won?

Yep. Going through the last hundred pages to make them less so (the typesetter will hate me).  But here's the thing. The broken language skills helped characterize her and show that she is not of the same culture. To go back and smooth those out would really undermine that separateness and strangeness. So you should see some of the pages. Covered in green from me. But I think the book will be better for it. It's just frustrating to try to fix it on the copy edited pages and there's so much text involved that I can't just print fresh pages.

Well, off I go. Dinner time. I wonder what I plan to have?

Di