I Meant That To Be There

Quarantine Project Day 34

Had to spend a lot of time recently going through the copy edits on my forthcoming book The Silent Land.  It's one of the characteristics of professional novel writing that while you're in the middle of writing a new novel, you are called on to deal with edits or check proofs of work you are emotionally done with.  It's not easy to devote the proper focus to these sessions because you are - well, I mean that I am - impatient to be getting on with the next project.

Copy editing is an enormously focussed skill and copy editors are the great unsung contributors to a novel.  Quite apart from the grammatical and punctuation errors (and even though I think I'm a stickler for all that stuff my work is littered with tiny typos or errors or inconsistencies) they bring an astonishing eye and an almost legal sensibility into play; one that can highlight anachronisms, non sequiturs, contradictions and hidden absurdities you would swear were all inserted by a dark fairy after you'd turned your back on the manuscript.  (Yes, you can occasionally get enraged by obtuse copy editors, but that's not so common.)  Anyway I've just had the superb services of Lisa Rogers on The Silent Land and all praise to her.

I know I couldn't manage without editors and copy-editors, and my work has always been improved by their inputs.

Anyway, with all that going on I still managed to turn out a fair amount of material on the new novel - title still a secret - in which, no doubt, a week has six days, the snow falls in July and the cock crows at noon.  You can't always shout: I meant that to be there!

1493 words.

(For yesterday's blog in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")