Copy Editing Info for the Reader

Things I recall from Copy Edits every time:

1) I can (and am sure every author can) play with word choice ad infinitum.

2) I will go through the ms pages and look for orphans (1 word hanging on a line at the end of a paragraph), and fix them 8 out of 10 times. Ditto with 1 line at the top of a page at the end of a chapter. If I don't fix them, then the whole chapter is tight and I believe needs every word.

3) If I add some language early (like about a week ago ;)) that I think I am so-so with, when I look at it, the paragraph/s are ok.

4) There are things that I, the copy editor, and my editor will miss, and sometimes they are BIG. Like when I said in the previous scene that "she teleported them home and to bed." And in the next scene he is walking out to the glider and thinking about the glider ride home.... Granted these were two different scenes, and both copy editor and editor might have missed it because they took a break between scene 1 and 2, but I didn't (I did this, literally, in one very long day), and I caught it.

5) I MUST say it. I work in Word Perfect and have problems with Word. Editor comments start out with green, then, when I open it again on a different day or machine, she is now blue.

Fonts get messed around. Can't see the formatting if I want to add something to a Fam's italicized comment because I can't see where it begins or ends, like in WordPerfect. Also, takes over a minute to load, too full of edits for Word to handle. Nothing I ever have in Wordperfect takes that long to load.

6) This time I did figure a few things out re: formatting. Don't change to .rtf then to Word, it's worse than importing Wordperfect to Word. I also finally figured out how to hide the comments and how to cut and paste the document into Wordperfect without the comments showing (which I won't want them to do because of the ARCs I'll make).

So, all in all, there were occasional bad moments, but not as hideous as it could have been.

And, YES, EVERY BOOK IS HARD, AND USUALLY EVERY BOOK IS HARDER IN A DIFFERENT PLACE.

And I still love the story of Heart Search. ;)

May you enjoy the challenges of your work today.
Robin