Because to the reader, a book goes from vague idea to hardback-in-hand, I’m doing a series of blog posts (no spoilers!) about the actual process for The Lantern’s Dance. (Though rest assured—it’s still pretty magical.)
I’ve just finished the proof pages—those pages where the much-marked-up manuscript is formatted to look like the actual final hardback. Previously, they asked me to approve the interior design, such as the title page—
And now here it is on the actual page, with the book’s nice stylish font.
They sent it to me as a pdf, with daunting instructions for editing pdfs. Yes, I know a pdf is absolutely firmly how a thing looks on the page, immutable and permanent…except not really. We’ll get to that in a minute.
My publisher has been remarkably patient with my fixation on paper edits, but in this case, here it is. So, naturally, I printed it off so I could make notes and feel in some kind of control.
Until I got to the first page, and found that, three lines apart, Russell snaps, then refers to herself as snappy.
I mean, really, Laurie? Are you blind? Well, yes, I am with words on the page, which is why I need to sit and read it aloud. One. Word. At. A. Time. Full-voiced, not muttering. Roughly 25 pages per session, with luck two sessions a day.
By doing a readaloud, I’m more apt to catch places where I, yes, repeat words, but also where I use two words that look completely different on the page but are going to echo against each other in the audio book. Or words that aren’t quite what I meant. Or phrases that clunk or mislead. Or paragraphs that meander, rather than march along, clean and crisp.
I also catch places where my last rewrite failed to correct some plot point that had been changed earlier, and waits to confuse any reader trying to pay attention, such as having someone stand up when they were in fact already standing at the window, or deliver a climactic comeback that got said two pages before.
It took me about a week, and then to tackle the dread Adobe Acrobat pdf editor.
Ah, no. Freebie version? Not really. Sign up for a trial week—okay, but my screen looks nothing like my publisher’s instruction sheet. And it lets me draw a line through words, but not delete them—no, now it lets me delete them, but I can’t actually add words.
In the end, I decided it was safer to put everything in as a comment:
Delete had (duplication)
Change he TO: Holmes
Change HOLMES TO: he
Question: should it be were, or was?
Etcetera, etcetera.
And I created a short e-doc for three or four places where the changes were a little complicated, and the poor editor charged with in-putting the changes might get a headache if I didn’t simply type out what the finished paragraph should look like.
Additions to the Thanks page, a last brief question—
Should Twitter be changed to: Twitter/X ??
—and I’m finished.
Oh sure.
It asks me if I want to close out the tab, and since it won’t let me close the thing until I have, I do. (You can hear this coming, right?)
And the thing disappears. Gone, all the changes, four days of work.
I quietly close my laptop and walk away. And the next morning, I go hunting, and find a version that looks right, and although the request for download never does download anything, a button offers to invite someone to share. So I do. And mirabile dictu, the invitation arrives in her in-box. And apparently, all 295 comments come with it.
I hate e-edits, even on a Doc file.
But this does mean that I never have to read the book again.
That, my friend, is your job.
**
You can pre-order The Lantern’s Dance from: Bookshop Santa Cruz (signed); Poisoned Pen Books (signed); Bookshop.org (supporting Indie booksellers); Barnes & Noble; or Amazon.