Posts Tagged ‘Writing’

The next book is due out August 21. Now I’m in that odd space in which I’m working on the next-next and next-next-next books (one a Young Adult novel, the other, well, let’s wait) so that when I head out on book tour for the next book my head will actually be full of the next-next and next-next-next and it’ll be like having someone you saw every day for two years suddenly reappear after a six-month absence. By that time, much of the book will be a surprise to me again.

Here’s something from the Young Adult book I’m working on:

If you see me you will know me because I wear a leather vest sewn from the hides of one dead badger and two dead deer, all skinned by myself and also I stripped the lettering from that old car and stitched it to the vest across my shoulder blades using copper wire so that in polished steel you can read my name and know it: [TO BE REVEALED LATER]

There are also two other possible book thingies in the hopper. Grateful to be busy.

Pursuant to my recent post on copyeditors, below are some of the comments left by the copyeditor of my most recent manuscript (book due out in August). Even out of context they should give you an idea of how thorough a good copyeditor is, and why I mean it when I say a good copyeditor makes me look smarter than I are, as it were.

might be better to delete this, since the sentence indicates “lowland” and this seems confusing, since it’s visually bringing the reader to a creek bottom only to find treetops, so to speak. I suspect you may be referring to the bottomland (low-lying land along a watercourse, says Webster’s) around Cotter Creek but again, the wording seems confusing here when you try to envision it.

from Le Tourneau company of Peoria; see old ads at, e.g., http://www.classicmachinery.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=198

: there is a hyphenated adjective but here the function is passive verb with adverb, hence no hyphen

I’d suggest something like “the World Court in The Hague,” since The Hague itself is a city of a half-million people. The World Court is technically the International Court of Justice, and the city also of course holds the International Criminal Court, but both of those names are long-winded, of course, so the shorthand World Court seems better. Could even just say that and drop “The Hague” altogether

And this represents only a page or two…

Just recently my editor taught me when to use “elder daughter” instead of “eldest.” Today my copyeditor taught me that these {} are called French braces. Sometimes I get questions about the “adversarial” relationship between writers and editors, and I say, sure, sometimes you have to stick up for your stuff, but most of the time (if you’re working with good folks, as I am), editors and copyeditors are in the business fo making me look smartest than I am.

Yes, those two typos were for fun.