The Copyedit: All Bark and No Bite

I’ve known the Vodnik copyedit would be showing up at my house (or email inbox, as the case may be) for quite some time. But since I’d never done a copyedit before, I had no idea what to expect. Unknown quantities are often the scariest for me. I had a ton of different things on my plate: from trips to Bangor to presenting at state-wide library conferences to organizing service projects to that lovely stairs project I’m (still) working on. The copyedit was the big unknown in all of that. I knew there’d be a hard deadline I’d have to meet–but I had no idea how much time it would take.

I was concerned.

I didn’t need to be.

As things turned out, I should have been much more worried about the stomach flu that was going to hit me Thursday night into Friday. That ended up affecting my life much more than the copyedit, which came at the same time. My editor asked for the copyedit to be back to her by Tuesday. I got it back to her Saturday. It basically was just me going through the manuscript, looking at each correction and saying, “Okay.” There weren’t even that many “okays” I had to say.

Bonus.

So the copyedit is now done, and I’m over the vicious stomach flu to boot. (Though that did entail lying down most of Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday. Joy.)

Where does the book go from here?

I’m a bit fuzzy on the details. I know it needs to get typeset, designed, the cover has to get finished, cover flap text has to be written . . . As for the order of when all this happens, I don’t really have a clue, mainly because a lot of it is Stuff I Don’t Have to Worry About. 🙂

Although of course I WILL worry about it, if asked to. Have no fear: I’ll probably tell you way more about the process than you’d ever really want to know.

In any case, this frees me up to do other things, like rewrite Tarnhelm (starting a week from Wednesday). And in the meantime, I have a short story I want to write for my annual Christmas newsletter. I plotted it out the other day, and a week should be just enough time to get it done.

Anyway–that’s all the time for updates I have for today. Good night all!