Tuesday, October 6, 2009

The Edited Version


The full edited version of my manuscript arrived yesterday, and it was terribly exciting. The editors had lots of nice things to say about the book in a cover letter, but that was obviously meant to soften the blow before I turned to the actual manuscript, which was a storm of pencil marks, queries and suggested improvements.
I now have two weeks to read carefully through it, answer the queries, agree to or reject the changes, and write a couple of explanatory passages. It's quite daunting, simply because I don't really know what to do - the editor's shorthand is quite a mystery to me, and at this stage I worry that adding sentences to explain something that is unclear in the text will look clunky. But of course I'll do it. Right from the beginning of this process I decided I'd be the model author who would respond to all requests positively. I have been warned by other authors that this is always the most difficult part of the whole creative process.

1 comment:

Globetrotting Gamine said...

hi! interesting blog!
Help! Who did you have to edit your manuscript? I have one ready to be edited or for an agent- any help would be much appreciated!!

Love,
MG

*whosthatgamine.blogspot.com*