Tired of the same old, same old? Welcome to My World of Historical Hilarity! Regency drawing room, not bedroom, romantic comedy, sometimes spiced with paranormal, fantasy, mystery or science fiction.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
The Amount of Work Involved - Edits
In a previous post, I blogged about the seventy-four versions of Mistletoe Everywhere, my Regency Christmas story, that I wrote before I submitted it.
I've since edited the story, producing more versions. The editor didn't make very many changes, so I had sent in a pretty clean copy. Still, I made improvements.
Most of the changes involved replacing words I use too often with better words. Some of my particular culprits are "turn", "face", "head", "place" and "look". I type several possible choices into the manuscript and bold them. When I finally make my selection, I delete the losers. I also eliminated unnecessary words, rewrote some sentences that now sounded awkward, and gave better explanations of a few plot points.
The size of the story didn't change much. The length of the story at first submission was 26, 560 words. When I finished my edits, the length was 26, 388 words, after 17 versions. I'm allowed thirty days for edits, and I returned the story a few days early. The editor said she liked my changes, so I guess the extra work was worth it.
Then the galley arrived. I found all of seven typos and added something for the "Praise for" page.
The editor returned the galley with everything fixed. Now I wait for the release date. Since Mistletoe Everywhere is a Christmas story, I expect the release date to be sometime in December.
Thank you all,
Linda
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2 comments:
You sound like me, Linda. I did the same thing on FL. I had very few edits from the editor to change, so I found my own. I clarified and added a bit too. My word count increased by about two hundred words and my editor approved it. But I also tried to find overused words and sentences that didn't work well.
Hi Kaye, I think using all the time allotted for editing is a wise move. It's amazing the things you see once you haven't looked at the story for a while.
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