Feeling virtuous today for having finished a full edit. I hit ‘send’ on the manuscript. I’m full of curiosity to see what the publisher’s editor tells me to do, and my firm plan is to be obedient! We’ll see how well I keep to my fine intentions.
I don’t know how many of you writers have had to do this type of clean-up, but I went through every chapter for dates, since I wanted a simple chronological progression, and I found a couple of time transgression issues to fix. I ended up with sheets of paper scribbled with chapter numbers and dates. You’d think I would have done all this before and the truth is, I have. About three times, all the way through. But little gremlins were at play and I’m grateful now that I’ve tweaked the whole thing back into order. Gives me cold sweat to imagine how I would have felt if I hadn’t done this run-through and made sure.
But then again, I’m a doorknob rattler, one of the folk who can’t leave the house for a walk without verifying that the stove top is off, the microwave controls cleared, knobs on my oven turned to ‘off’ and ‘Warm’, the taps checked for drips and the refrigerator doors fully closed. There’s this tale I heard about a cat named Cicero who got into the fridge and consumed five pounds of red snapper before being discovered. He slouched off to sit in the sun and warm up a bit afterwards, but it seemed to do him no harm. However, his people had to think out dinner all over from scratch. That was one cool cat.
I’m sure they’ll still find some typos.
Modern technology is splendid but just a keystroke makes all the difference. What was the bit in the news about the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs having a typo on the front of the Commencement Program proclaiming it the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Pubic Affairs? A cautionary tale indeed!
