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

Editing: Using Words Too Often

My editor returned Mistletoe Everywhere for edits. She didn't make that many changes, which means that I sent in a pretty clean copy, but every manuscript can use some improvement.

As I reread the story, I found that I use some words too often.

I didn't see them when I wrote the manuscript. Probably a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. But now, all those repeats glare back at me.

No one will notice "a", "and" or "the", no matter how many times you repeat them. Nor will they notice pronouns or "he said" or "she said", although you should use those tags as little as possible.

I'm talking about words like "turn", "face", "head", "place", and "look". Aarg! Using them once in a page is fine, but using them in two succeeding sentences is a no-no.

I search in Microsoft Word (my manuscript is a Word file) and write down the pages of all the occurrences of each word. Then I go back and rewrite sentences where these troublesome words occur too close together. And, lo and behold, the sentences sound better.

Ah, editing. What a wonderful process.

Thank you all,
Linda

Pumpkinnapper Edits Done

Actually, I finished the edits on December 7. I hadn’t looked at the story for over a month, and it’s amazing the number of things you see after you’ve left it for a while.

The editor didn’t make very many changes, although she did find two problems I fixed. While the story already was fairly clean, now I could see I use some words too often. Too many only’s, breath’s, turn’s, return’s, took’s, gave’s, put’s. I found a handy-dandy thesaurus at the freedictionary.com and replaced and rewrote. But the story is only about 100 words longer.

Then I copied all the changes into a fresh copy of the file, spell-checked once more, and sent it off to the editor. She sent me mail back saying she wanted to get it done before the Wild Rose PRess Christmas shutdown. And I thought I could concentrate on promotion for a while. Silly me.

She returned the ms. only three days later, asking me to check cadence and grammar. Reading the story aloud will help the cadence. I thought the grammar was all right, but I will check again. Maybe I missed some dangling participles. And I’m sure I will see more places where I can replace ordinary words with better ones.

The best part is, she doesn’t expect it back until the end of January, so I can take a breather.

Merry Christmas to all.

I now have three solid weeks off for the first time in my working life, thanks to plant shutdown and vacation I have to take. I intend to put a dent in my TBR pile.

And as the days count down, it’s only two and a half weeks to Lady of the Stars release on January 7 at The Wild Rose Press.

Thank you all,

Linda