Earlier this week, I got copy edits back for my forthcoming novel, The Lightning Tree. I’ve got a couple of weeks to work through them (more than a reasonable amount of time) and this is the third different publisher I’ve gone through this process with.
While each experience has been similar, each publisher has their own house style, rules, and format. It’s a necessary part of the development cycle of a book, and one that signals the hardest parts of that development cycle are coming to an end.
Typically, when a book is obtained by a publisher, there are two different sets of edits—the developmental or story edit, usually conducted hand-in-hand with the editor who acquired your book or is shepherding your work at the publisher, and then the copy edit. The former is more esoteric, more big picture, more feel; it’s does this story work, and akin to getting notes on a screenplay. When you hear an author talk about an editorial letter, this is usually what they’re referring to, and much like getting noted on a film or TV screenplay, it can be somewhat anxiety producing, because this edit/letter really determines the immediate future of your book, or if it’s going to have one at all.
The latter edit is the nitty-gritty, down in the weeds, grammar/punctuation/syntax pass, and it’s almost always conducted by someone other than your development editor, or at least that’s been true in my cases. Across my four books for Putnam, I had at most two different copy editors (as best as I can recall, and that was great, since three of those books comprised a trilogy); for my two books at Thomas & Mercer, I had the same copy editor. But since I’m only one book in with Crooked Lane, I ‘m not as well-versed with their copy editing process, so it’s possible they have a stable of copy editors and assign them by availability, or even use a rotating cast of freelancers.
In any case, whatever relationship you can build with your copy editor is just as important as the one you build with your developmental editor. While a copy edit is more “formal,” and in some ways more cut and dried—you’re focusing on consistency and accuracy and readability—it’s still your book, your work, your voice, and I’ve almost never been in a position where I haven’t been able to push back or disagree with a copy edit, or at least discuss it. And if you’re lucky enough to carry your copy editor across multiple books, they start to understand your language and idiosyncrasies, your preferences, and again, that most elusive thing, your voice.
Nowadays most copy edits are done via tracked changes in Microsoft Word, so the process is as simple as moving page by page through the copy edited manuscript, either agreeing or disagreeing with the proposed edits, and addressing the “comment bubbles” that invariably arise (are you sure you meant to use this word, and not that word?). But simple is still relative to a complex task, and although at this stage you’re not usually adding new characters or changing the plot or that kind of heavy lifting, it’s still a hugely critical piece of the work that needs to get done before your book is actually published. It’s not unusual to face a couple of rounds of copy edits, and I try to block out my time in such a way that I go through each round as a whole with as few interruptions as possible; I’ll devote back-to-back days to getting through it, rather than doing a few pages on one day, then a few on another. Again, I find that helps my consistency as I address issues, which is the name of the game, after all.
This week I’m making good progress on Murmur again (maybe the follow-up to The Lightning Tree), although I’m less committed to that title than I was before, and I’m often barely committed to a title anyway. But I do like where the book is going. It ties back in small ways to Call the Dark, and it would be an appropriate follow-up to Lightning Tree, even though that book itself paves the way for a totally new potential series. Still, I want to get Murmur (or whatever I call it) fully out of my head and on the page, before I make any hard and fast decisions on what to write next.
Black Horses (already started)? Untitled Fantasy Novel (already started)? Second series book after The Lightning Tree? Or this dark horse “Road” novel I’ve made some cryptic notes for?
Decisions, decisions…
Also, (finally) got some more news this week relative to the TV series I’m slated to start working on, and hope to be able to share that next post!
As always, feel free to—