Sometimes,
it feels like that. At present, I’m coming to the end of a final edit for Maureen,
my editor of Catalyst, which is due
for publication by Crooked Cat in a few weeks. The book has been edited a
number of times, but when Maureen asked me to check it over and sign it off, I
couldn’t resist having another read-through. The temptation at this stage is to
let it go, as it has been read more than once by several critical eyes. Always,
always, there will be something that has been missed, even with the best will
and experience and diligence in the world. Mostly, it will be style things –
such as echo words appearing in the same page or even paragraph. I’ve caught
four instances of that. One instance where it should have been ‘he’, not ‘she’;
it happens. I’ve said it before and will doubtless repeat it again often, but
you will never catch all the typos or errors, but you need to strive to do so.
Next
is the edit of The Prague Papers, due
for publication by Crooked Cat later this year. I’m giving it the final check
as requested by my editor Jeff. Some radical surgery has been committed on this
book, and it’s all to the good. Quite a few thousand words have been excised by
me since really they don’t move the story forward. Those lost words are
interesting back-story, but they slow down the tale. I will probably include
some of the missing material in a forthcoming blog/website for the protagonist,
Tana Standish, psychic spy.
Tana Standish, psychic spy
The
moral here is that just because you’ve completed a novel and it has been
accepted, that doesn’t mean it is really finished. Approach these final edits
with the same diligence applied to the manuscript prior to being despatched to
the publisher.
And
I’m still in the throes – getting to the exciting end – of Catacomb, the sequel to Catalyst.
That’s taking a backseat while I clear the above edits. Yet even so, the
characters are busy in the back of my head, jostling for a place, attempting to
overcome the obstacles I put in their way before shunting them into a temporary
limbo.
Finally,
when I’ve completed Catacomb I need
to return to the fantasy world of Floreskand, to get on with the sequel to Wings of the Overlord, To Be King, which has now been plotted
in depth after a visit from my co-author, Gordon Faulkner.
2 comments:
It is a seductive trap to let that final edit slip by. Yet, we can over-do it and never let go.
Like with children, we have to do the best we can, and then let them go out into the cold world!
Tana Standish, huh? One of my protagonists is Victor Standish. Maybe they are related. :-)
Hi, Roland. Thanks for the input. I agree, a book is never finished, it's abandoned - which I said on p146 of WRITE A WESTERN IN 30 DAYS. Interesting about Standish. Tana's adoptive father Hugh was in the RN and died in a car crash in 1944.
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