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I'm flat out exhausted. Completely tapped. Wasted.
It's been a bit of a week, workwise, in other words. But I've come to the end of proofreading The Quiet War, and I've entered all the changes and corrections into the electronic master file of the manuscript (not all writers do this, but I like to keep a copy that's as close as possible to the finished book). Now all I have to do is type up a list of all the changes so that the hero editor, who has to insert them in the proofs that will be sent back to the printers, can understand all the tweaks I've made. I regret to say I had a couple of second thoughts on some changes, and this is where I discovered that the ecologically-friendly water-based Tippex I use isn't compatible with the ecologically-friendly water-based ink of my red pen, resulting in little pink puddles. Oh dear. Amazing that book production still has its Victorian moments, involving actual handwriting...
Oh, I also have to incorporate changes suggested by my volunteer proofreader, who will read the damn fat thing to check for things that I might have missed. I'm too close to the work to spot every little error, especially the repetition of certain words in closely adjacent sentences and paragraphs (a good reason to keep modifiers to the minimum, this).
Meanwhile, I've managed to maintain steady progress, at ten pages a day, on the second draft of the ongoing. This involves a lot of red ink too, as I like to scribble all kinds of changes and crossings-out and cryptic notes and rewordings on printed-out pages before typing them into the electronic manuscript. What with this, and the changes to proofs, I'm on my second red pen of the week (Pentel with a 0.7mm tip and liquid gel ink). And I'm back at Neptune, in a funky little habitat orbiting the irregular little moon Neso, and pretty soon I'll be on the Moon, Earth's moon, and then back to Earth for all kinds of serious fun.
It's been a bit of a week, workwise, in other words. But I've come to the end of proofreading The Quiet War, and I've entered all the changes and corrections into the electronic master file of the manuscript (not all writers do this, but I like to keep a copy that's as close as possible to the finished book). Now all I have to do is type up a list of all the changes so that the hero editor, who has to insert them in the proofs that will be sent back to the printers, can understand all the tweaks I've made. I regret to say I had a couple of second thoughts on some changes, and this is where I discovered that the ecologically-friendly water-based Tippex I use isn't compatible with the ecologically-friendly water-based ink of my red pen, resulting in little pink puddles. Oh dear. Amazing that book production still has its Victorian moments, involving actual handwriting...
Oh, I also have to incorporate changes suggested by my volunteer proofreader, who will read the damn fat thing to check for things that I might have missed. I'm too close to the work to spot every little error, especially the repetition of certain words in closely adjacent sentences and paragraphs (a good reason to keep modifiers to the minimum, this).
Meanwhile, I've managed to maintain steady progress, at ten pages a day, on the second draft of the ongoing. This involves a lot of red ink too, as I like to scribble all kinds of changes and crossings-out and cryptic notes and rewordings on printed-out pages before typing them into the electronic manuscript. What with this, and the changes to proofs, I'm on my second red pen of the week (Pentel with a 0.7mm tip and liquid gel ink). And I'm back at Neptune, in a funky little habitat orbiting the irregular little moon Neso, and pretty soon I'll be on the Moon, Earth's moon, and then back to Earth for all kinds of serious fun.
posted by Paul McAuley at 4:38 pm
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