Beverly Jenness's Blog: Daily Struggles of an Unknown Author - Posts Tagged "editing-nightmares"

My husband wants to do the final edit on my book ( bless his little pea pickin' heart!) OK, no problem, except he wants a hard copy. OK, I can do that, I have a printer and a case of paper I just bought ( on sale because of back to school time) Lets fire it up! I start printing the first 90 pages ( first two chapters) I leave and come back. It has stopped printing, out of ink. Replace the ink and fire it up again. Cool , all done. Oops, the page numbers didn't print. No problem, I can write the numbers on the pages. As I'm numbering the pages by hand, I notice about three lines of text, per page, can't be reads very well and not the same three lines either. They bounce around all over the pages. If you knew my husband, you would know this is totally unexceptable. So I go into "printers" and then "printer properties" to diagnose the problem, misaligned and dirty. Get everything back in order and start printing again, this time, only one chapter at a time. Walk away to do something else and when I get back, it has stpped printing, "out of paper" message. Nope plenty of paper. Pull the paper out, put it back and off we go again. Prints a couple of pages then same message, "out of paper" I take the paper out and replace it again, start printing again. I go through this three more times. Finally everything seems to be working correctly, leave and come back. It has stopped printing again. "Out of paper" error. Get it printing again and I notice a few sheets of paper on the floor. My printer has spit a couple of pages onto the floor. Remember, they're not numbered. So I have to figure out where they go. I finally get the first chapter printed, manage to get the orphaned pages back where they belong and get the pages all numbered. It's been a long afternoon. Not sure I even want to try chapter two!

I love my husband, but... he has been editing my latest book. And he is very good at it. He likes to 'read between the lines'. However, he believes I need a transition from one event to another. I don't disagree but the work involved to add this simple transition is going to be very involved. This is going to require a shuffling of events and some changes in other places. On the other hand, I seem to have left out some important information, the problem that comes with knowing what you write. I thought I had included this stuff, but I didn't, so I guess it's my own fault. Not that I'll tell my husband, wouldn't want to give him too much credit, he might let it go to his head.
Then, he is suggesting things too, confrontations, theft, murder and mayhem. It isn't like you can just throw things in. You have to have them blend with your plot/ story line.
All his "help" is giving me a headache!