Editing behind the scenes
don't we all agree verb tenses are fascinating?
This week, a storm is battering the mid-Atlantic states and it looks like D.C. just got almost a foot of snow. (And since drafting this post and scheduling it to go out today, LA has fallen grip to devastating wildfires. We are watching with horror as people’s homes and possessions are engulfed in flames. If you are in the LA area, we hope you are safe.) Meanwhile, in Boston and environs, the temperatures are hunkering down below freezing—and so are we. Hunkering down, that is. But you know what isn’t hunkering down in the cold? You know what experience offers warmth and sunshine and easy breezes (no, I am not trying to sound like a CoverGirl ad)? The Krouna Writing Workshop in northern Greece that Galiot Press is running this July 12-18! That’s what! If this winter weather has you dreaming of a getaway. . . Well, wait until July! But plan that getaway now by applying to join us in the dramatic mountain village of Papingo, Greece this summer. Click here to visit the Krouna site for all sort of details about the retreat. Past attendees have called the workshop “welcoming”, “productive”, “irresistible”, “unique” and “a game-changer”.
Editing is under way
The process of editing and otherwise preparing the manuscript of Emily Ross’ SWALLOWTAIL is officially under way. What does this mean? Some of you subscribers are already familiar with the editing process that a manuscript undergoes before it reaches publication. But for those who are not, here’s how we’re going about it (paid subscribers can scroll down for additional content about the specifics of editing SWALLOWTAIL).
Once we acquire a manuscript, the author sends us the document (in Microsoft Word) that we’re going to be working with. Using the Review mode, we’ll make detailed edits in the text (which we will do as “suggestions” so that the author can see what we’re, well, suggesting, and can accept or reject the edits). We’ll also make at-times lengthy comments in the margins, tied to a particular moment or phrase or even word in the manuscript. When I do this sort of thing, I (Henriette), consider my comments as part of an ongoing conversation I’m having with the writer. I like to type in my comments as I react, so that the writer can see where I might have had a confusion that—though it might have been cleared up a page later—could be worth resolving. I want the writer to get a sense of how at least this one reader is reacting to the manuscript in real time.
After I’ve done a thorough read-through and marked up the text, I’ll look at all my comments again—not only to be sure they aren’t gibberish, but also to identify the themes that have emerged (though I keep track of these with notes in a different document). And then I begin to write what’s called in the business the “editorial letter”. My editorial letters (as some of you who might have done a manuscript consultation with me might recall) tend to be 4-5 pages single-spaced, sometimes longer, in which I go through suggestions and commentary that I group around those aforementioned themes and categories. As for the categories: they may have to do with the content of the book (as in, how to make sure that certain ideas or storylines emerge as they should), or with the craft.
Sometimes, my editorial notes might involve grammar. You would think this would be a simple issue. Surely, a publisher/editor wants their novel to use grammar? Yes. But also no. A writer might wish, for instance, to use a lot of sentence fragments, or a lot of run-on sentences (yours truly is an avowed fan of run-on sentences in fiction). Or a lot of em-dashes—which I’ll confess in this sentence fragment that I have a penchant for myself. These elements could be perfect for the novel in question, but they can be technically seen as “incorrect”. (English is a fluid thing, of course, so we know it’s ever-changing and even purists like me will admit that it’s ok to allow some flux.) This means that, in conversation with the author, we need to make a decision about the style we’re going to maintain for the novel.
Further along in the editing process, the copy-editor will produce what’s known as a “style sheet” which will keep track of and list things like character names and nicknames, hair color, dates of birth; important dates in the chronology of the novel; location names and geography; etc. But some copy-editors will use a style sheet to also lay down the rules for the language of the novel, clarifying whether, for instance, run-on sentences should be corrected or preserved, or whether other “improper” grammatical forms should be excised or allowed to stand. In my editing process, I might well incorporate this kind of grammatical style sheet to be sure the author and I are working within the same framework. In editing Emily’s manuscript for SWALLOWTAIL, she and I had a phone conversation to go over certain issues in my editorial letter—one of which was exactly this: a question of grammar and how to work with the novel’s style.