One of my oldest and dearest friends, Amy MacKinnon, recently sold her novel Tethered (Shaye Areheart Books, August 12, 2008) and has just finished the copyediting phase of publishing her book. When she received her manuscript after the first copyedit, she looked at the pages with some confusion because she didn’t understand what most of the copyediting marks meant (this being her first published novel). She was given some time by her publisher to look through the manuscript and either accept or stet the copyedits. Also, she knew this would be one of the last times she would be able to go through the manuscript and find inconsistencies, fix mistakes, and clean it up more. She found it a little daunting.
She called me up and asked if I would mind going over the manuscript with her. I was, of course, thrilled to help. I welcomed the opportunity to help a friend and I always love to look at another copyeditor’s work. (It’s interesting to see how different copyeditors handle certain points.) She sent me a copy of the manuscript, and I went to work. The copyediting was excellent, but, since it was only the first copyedit, I found several items to discuss with Amy. Normally, I would simply mark the manuscript and send it back to the author. But since Amy and I are very close and talk almost every day, we spent a few hours on the phone going through the manuscript point by point. I can’t tell you how great it was to speak to an author about edits I was suggesting, and make my queries verbally, rather than writing them in the margins of the manuscript. One of the edits happened to be a timeline issue (I’m a real stickler when it comes to these), and at first Amy didn’t see what I was talking about. But I was able to explain my reasoning to her, and then she understood. How wonderful to be able to have a live discussion about these issues instead of the usual process. I was really spoiled on this job (really a labor of love)!
I wish all my future jobs could be like this one.
