On Delays Before the Advanced Review
Last week, I thought my manuscript was finished.
My publisher was graciously giving me the opportunity to review final drafts of the interior and exterior of the advanced review copy. I checked some of my final edits to make sure they made it into this last draft. I asked for a different layout in the table of contents, and a fix to the header in the prologue. He said he would incorporate my changes. I thought we were done.
Then, on Friday afternoon, he started sending me articles about “said-bookisms.” (Said-bookisms are the words that come after dialogue in place of said, like cried, asked, demanded, squeaked, and whispered. Never heard of them? Yeah, me either.)
I should have known then that I was in for a bumpy week.
The publisher had shown my final manuscript to a new spring intern, and the intern had some suggestions. I knew I should be grateful for the extra (free) feedback, but I wasn’t so thrilled when I learned from the intern’s analysis that I used the word “whispered” 77 times in a 300 page book. And, well, it turns out my characters “gasped” 10 times, “admitted” 12 times, and “finished (talking)” 38 times. “Explained”: 27 times. “Sighed”: 49 times. “Suggested”: 18 times. “Stammered”: 14 times.
So maybe he had a point.
The publisher said he wanted to fix it before sending to the reviewers (many of whom, by the way, were expecting the book in January). Given the tight timeline, the publisher committed to making the changes himself. Again, he was kind enough to send me the changes he proposed, and not to grumble when I responded with my 50+ alternate suggestions to his changes. As I was starting work on those, another email came. “A Coupla Plot-Related Problems.” My stomach sank.
Fortunately, the problems he sent were not fundamental. It seems the intern had mistaken the setting of an (admittedly vaguely described) scene in Israel for a mental hospital. This could be fixed.
On Wednesday night, I was up late making all the changes, but I discovered something even more troubling than the fact that my publisher wanted to change “repeated” to “again said.” There were some section line breaks missing in a bunch of the pages I was correcting. The scenes in some of the chapters were connected, without that friendly break that tells you some time has passed, and it’s okay to go get a cup of coffee right now (but really you should keep reading to find out what happens next).
On Thursday morning I read Chapter One of the designed draft and I found this problem was not just occasional. ALL of the section breaks were missing from the chapter! I sent a hasty email to my publisher raising the concern.
Later that day, I received an email from him, instructing his designer to add back all TWO HUNDRED missing line breaks. Wow.
The moral of this story:
I am so grateful to have a publisher who is willing to a) let me review final copies and identify these kinds of problems, and b) do a substantial chunk of the work to fix them for me. And, (grumble grumble) who provides extra pairs of eyes to find flaws we might have missed in all the prior reviews. Three cheers for partnership.As my husband reminded me, “gam zu l’tova” (everything that happens is for the ultimate good). If the intern hadn’t started poking around, I never would have realized the much more significant layout problem.My advanced review copies are going to be late. If you are on that special list, please be patient. The book will be better (less whispering, clearer settings, and appropriate line breaks) for the delay!
