Editing
25 June 2007
'When you edit your work ...' we say blithely to our creative writing classes.
Do you know what 'editing' actually means?
I am editing this morning. One of the tasks I have underway involves this list. Does it mean anything to you?
abonnés
Académie
aftershock
alma mater
Anatole Vernier
arrondissement
au feu
avenue
de l'Opéra
Boche
Boulevard de Clichy
Boulevard des Capucines
Boulevard Haussmann
café
Notice how some terms are highlighted with italics, some not. Some are upper case, some not.
I've collected them as they cropped up in the typescript of Sepulchre, then arranged them alphabetically ...
When the list is complete, it will make up the style sheet for Sepulchre. Hopefully the typescript will be 'clean' - that is, it will be consistent in its spellings and typography, how I set out the text on the page.
The editor will have given me advice and suggestions on tweaks to the structure of the story. These I will have used or adapted or developed. Then I save it - eighty or so computer files. And if it is 'clean', it makes things so much easier for the copy editor ...
Copy editor. There's another one. What do they do?
OK. Say I've completed my second or third or fourth draft. As author, it becomes hard to see the wood for the trees. So many versions of your typescript seem to be residing simultaneously in your head that it is hard to remember accurately which scene - or which version of each scene - is which.
So a copy editor - a highly skilled publishing professional - is employed to go through your novel with a fresh, accurate eye. Invaluable!
Scary too, though. Because you are then very close to losing control of your novel - like a child leaving home.
Leaving the Sepulchre.
